Of all the animals with which man has become acquainted, and over which
he has succeeded in establishing his dominion, none have had greater
cause to deprecate his tyranny, and to exclaim, had they the gift of
speech, against his wanton barbarity, than the unfortunate creature whose
simple and unoffending habits I have selected for the subject of the
present paper.
With the appearance and form of this animal most of my readers are
doubtless tolerably acquainted, as it is a pretty common inhabitant of
this country, and would be still more abundant, were not its numbers
checked by that barbarous and brutal amusement, badger-baiting, to which,
despite the interference of the laws, hundreds yearly fall victims. In
general appearance as well as internal structure the badger approximates
closely to the bear, and may, I think not unaptly, be regarded as the
existing representative of that once formidable denizen of the wilds of
our native land. Like the bear, the badger walks upon his heels and his
legs being very short, and his hair remarkably thick and long, his belly
appears almost to touch the ground; a little observation is however
sufficient to show that it does not actually do so. He is a nocturnal
animal, that is to say, he sleeps during the day, and at the approach of
evening leaves his habitation in search of food; yet nocturnal though
his habits, and however closely he may in that respect resemble the
predacious tribes, the food of the badger is of such a description that
its appropriation injures no one, but is on the contrary productive of
great benefit to the agriculturist, consisting as it does chiefly, if
not solely, of roots and reptiles, as frogs, worms, grubs, beetles, &c.
The badger is as far as I have been able to discover, monogamous, lives
affectionately with his mate and little ones in his secluded burrow,
and in his deportment to them displays feelings of ardent devotion
and disinterested attachment which many of this poor creature’s biped
persecutors would do well to imitate.
The common badger is about as large as a middle-sized dog, from two
feet to two feet and a half in length, exclusive of the tail, and about
a foot or fifteen inches high. He weighs from twenty to thirty-five
pounds, sometimes even more--I saw a badger in Edinburgh about six years
ago which weighed forty-seven pounds; such a growth is however very
rarely attained. In coat the badger presents a remarkable peculiarity.
Among nearly all mammiferous animals the dorsal region of the body is
of a darker or deeper colour than the under parts, or ventral region.
The colour of the badger is on the contrary greyish above and black
underneath. The fur of the badger is thick, rough, and by no means
glossy; the skin, with the hair on, is dressed and manufactured into
pistol cases. The skin of the head and face may be frequently seen
forming the “_sporran_” or purse which depends from the girdle of the
Scottish highlander; and the hairs of the tail are in great request for
the manufacture of paint and lather brushes. The badger is an inhabitant
of all the temperate parts of Europe and Asia. In Great Britain and
France it is scarcer, from the assiduity with which it is hunted and
destroyed. Doctor Richardson has identified various new species in his
account of the zoology of the arctic regions. As the object of the
present paper is however a sketch of the European animal, I shall not
notice any other at present, but merely refer such of my friends as
may feel curious on the subject, to Doctor Richardson’s splendid work
entitled “Fauna Boreali Americana.”
In his internal conformation the badger presents two remarkable features,
namely, in the first place a peculiar formation of jaws, which not merely
enables him to retain a firm hold of whatever object he seizes with his
teeth, but absolutely _lock_ in such a manner, that he himself does
not always possess the power of instantaneously unclosing them; and,
secondly, a pouch or bag placed just below the tail, whence exudes a
thick and fetid substance. It is upon this that the strong smell given
forth by this animal depends.
I had once a badger in my own possession, and the study of his habits
afforded me much interest and gratification. He was more than half grown
when I obtained possession of him, and I can assure my readers that
the task of taming him was no sinecure. The first agent I employed for
effecting his domestication was hunger. I kept him fasting for three
whole days, allowing him only a little water in his bowl, which humanity
would not suffer me to deny him. Starvation, however, did not produce
any immediate good effects, and the animal remained as fierce and
irreconcilable as ever. It would but needlessly occupy the readers’ time
were I minutely to recount the process of taming him; let it suffice to
refer them to my late papers in this Journal on the taming of animals.
I followed the rules therein laid down, and I had the satisfaction of
finding them ultimately successful, after from six to eight months of
anxious care, enlivened occasionally by the variety of a severe bite, a
casualty for which every practical zoologist must be prepared, and at
which it would be ridiculous for him to grumble. I have only to observe,
that were any one to present me with a hundred pounds for the mark of
every gash received by its teeth, of which the scars still remain on my
hands and legs, I should be tolerably rich.
After about eight months, however, he gave up his practice of constantly
biting when attempted to be handled, unless under great provocation or
excitement, and was not merely so gentle as to be with safety indulged
with partial liberty, but would come and go when I called him or drove
him from me, would feed from my hand or mount upon my knee, and was,
moreover, soon afterwards entrusted with entire liberty without any
danger of his running away. He was a very cleanly creature, carefully
scraping into one end of his cage whatever unpleasant matters might
collect in it, and he always contrived as much as possible to keep his
bed free of soil. Finding him so remarkably cleanly, I used to let him
out morning and evening, on such days as my absence from home obliged me
to keep him in a state of confinement.
I did not of course give him his liberty all at once, but according as he
grew tame I used to let him out in a room or enclosed yard, according to
the state of the weather, for an hour or two daily, and did not give him
his liberty altogether until his increased tameness gave me confidence
in his thorough domestication. This creature’s diet consisted of bread
and milk, varied with oatmeal porridge or _stirabout_, and potatoes
boiled soft and bruised down fine with milk, with occasionally a bit of
raw butcher’s meat. He was singularly nice respecting his meat; indeed
I suspect rather from the effects of good living in his easy state of
captivity, than from an impulse of nature; for had a piece of meat
once, and that no matter how slightly, known the fire, he would on no
account touch it, unless indeed when very hungry, and no raw flesh to be
had. Milk he appeared very fond of, and would drink freely; potatoes,
especially if mashed up with butter or milk, he would always dine
heartily off; but, which not a little surprised me, I frequently observed
him devouring them raw, and that too in the absence of hunger, and while
surrounded with what might naturally be supposed to be more palatable
food. He had a very strong and by no means very agreeable smell. I had
an old terrier named “Wasp,” who had been a good dog in his day, but,
weighed down by a load of years, was fast hurrying onward towards the
grave. Wasp’s teeth had failed him, his eyes had become dim, his clogged
and tattered ears scarcely informed him when I called his name, yet his
fondness for sport still remained, and he would lie for hours each day
at the door of the little yard in which the badger was confined, as if
resolved that, though his powers no longer admitted of his discovering
and attacking his enemy, yet he would, while he could, inhale the (to
him) delightful odour of his favourite game.
My badger passed nearly the whole of his days in sleep, and if I
attempted to disturb him, he would be sulky and peevish, and in no
humour for play. When evening drew near, however, he might be seen first
stirring, then opening his eyes and stretching himself, with many a
long and hearty yawn. The process of thoroughly awaking himself usually
occupied about twenty minutes, commencing with the decline of day, and
terminating with the arrival of darkness. The beginning of night usually
found him regularly astir; he was then restless and active, pacing to and
fro, examining every nook and cranny, climbing upon everything upon which
he was able to mount, and seizing, if out of doors, upon worms, beetles,
cockchafers, and snails, and if within, seeking for drowsy flies upon the
walls, or for beetles or crickets about the kitchen hearth, or in the
cellars when he could obtain access to them.
Many naturalists hold the opinion that the badger sleeps during the
winter, or at all events hibernates partially, that is to say, sleeps,
like the squirrel, for a few weeks, awakes, and takes a hearty meal of
the store of food it had sagaciously laid by in its nest ere retiring to
winter quarters, and then, coiling itself up in its nest, goes off to
sleep again. Whether this be true or not, I cannot with certainty affirm;
but this I can safely declare, that I endeavoured as much as possible
to make my badger hibernate, by exposing him to the unmitigated cold of
an unusually severe winter, by furnishing him with straw and wool to
line his nest, and with a stock of bread, snails, and potatoes, to lay
up for winter use. He did not, however, avail himself of my assistance,
but remained wakeful as usual during the entire winter. A remarkable
fact worthy of notice here is, that although this badger exhibited no
inclination to hibernate or sleep during the winter, he did display
considerable disposition to aestivate, or sleep during the hot months of
summer, for during that season he became languid and drowsy, lost his
appetite and flesh, became ragged and foul in the coat, and in short
pined away so rapidly that I feared I should lose him altogether; he
however revived completely as winter, and that a cold one, approached.
I made diligent inquiry of those who were in the habit of keeping badgers
for baiting them, and also of the proprietors of several menageries, and
learned from them that this disposition on the part of the badger to
become weak and lose its condition in summer, is not confined to isolated
individual cases, but is common to the entire tribe.
It is truly astonishing to observe with what quickness and dispatch the
badger forms a burrow, for which task indeed he is admirably adapted by
nature, in the construction of his anterior extremities. To give my
readers some idea of these powers, I shall conclude the present sketch
with the following anecdote of an individual in my possession:--Wishing
to increase the happiness of my pet, I procured a female of his own
species to keep him company, and while preparing a large enclosure for
their reception, I shut them both up in an outhouse: I do not think I
was half an hour absent, when on my return I found my new badger gone.
A moment’s investigation discovered the place of her concealment: the
animal had during my short absence formed a considerable burrow under the
wall of the outhouse, which, I must observe, was built against a bank
forming the side of a road. It was into that bank that the creature had
worked its way, and on listening I could hear it delving and scraping at
a great rate, about a yard from the back of the wall. I hastily procured
the assistance of a mason, who pulled down part of the wall, and by
working rapidly, succeeded in overtaking the badger just as she had
worked her way across the road to within a foot of the Edinburgh Botanic
Garden wall, beside which I lived. I may observe that the ground was by
no means soft, the burrow being formed under a hard macadamised road.