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.
H. D. R.