The town and plantation houses of the landed gentry include “Kenmore”, the home of George Washington’s only sister, Betty Washington Lewis, at Fredericksburg, Virginia; the Heyward-Washington House, Charleston, South Carolina; the Hammond-Harwood House, Annapolis, Maryland; the Ford Mansion, Morristown, New Jersey, Washington’s headquarters at the time Lafayette arrived to bring the glad tidings that France was sending an army to help the American cause. There are a number of others equally as famous. The owners of these houses were the famous colonists who, with the exception of a few who remained royalists, played prominent roles in the struggle for freedom. They are the patriots who obtained their niche in history as having fought and struggled in making America a free and great nation.
Some of this atmosphere of the exciting past comes to the Museum with this exhibition of textiles from these old homes. The walls of the Museum Gallery hung with five-yard lengths of these colorful textiles radiate a galaxy of colors in shimmering and lustrous silks. Framed charts are included with photographs of exteriors and interiors of each house. A brief resume of the lives of the owners, the period of architecture, and a description of color schemes of the rooms and contents are also given.
It is an exhibit of interest and educational value to every American, and alike, instructive to interior decorators and students of interior design. College and public school students studying American history will be enlightened as to how their famous forefathers lived.
THE BADGER, MASTER EXCAVATOR
by Donald F. Hoffmeister, Assistant Professor of Zoology and Curator of the Natural History Museum, University of Illinois
Photograph by E. P. Haddon, Fish and Wild Life Service
Although for many years the badger was common in Illinois, it all but vanished from this State about the first half of the 19th century. By 1861, an Illinois biologist commenting on the badger wrote that the species had “nearly abandoned the State,” and by the latter part of the past century the badger was definitely on the wane in Illinois.
But strangely enough, within recent years the badger once more has increased in numbers in northern Illinois and has reinvaded some of the territory it formerly occupied in central Illinois. It is most abundant in our northwestern counties, but even as far south as Fulton County this animal has been seen in nearly a dozen different localities in the past ten years. Two badgers were taken nearly as far east as the Indiana line in 1953. The badger, in spite of man’s attempt to control it, apparently is increasing and spreading.
Although you may live in an area where the badger is common, it would not be surprising if you had never seen this animal, for it is abroad principally at night. However, its presence is usually well known by the abundance of its diggings. The badger is excellently equipped to dig, with powerful forelegs tipped with long, strong claws. It is squat and streamlined for getting through—not over—the ground. More than once, a group of men have cornered a badger in a shallow burrow, but one badger with its own digging apparatus extended the burrow faster than the crew of men could shovel. When pursuing or pursued, the badger never rests on its “shovels”, but keeps them going at such a rapid pace that the tunnel behind is soon filled with moved dirt. The front legs loosen the dirt and push it under the animal, where the hind legs pick up the process and continue the earth on out behind. The operation proceeds like an endless track, without a wasted motion. As many as ten men, all equipped with shovels, have failed to keep up with the excavating of a badger, and the latter has escaped their intents. Ten men against a 30-pound badger! No wonder it has been called a master excavator. With the powerful front legs, the badger is not readily deterred in its burrowing. I have seen where a badger had decided to come to the surface from its subterranean burrow beneath a heavily macadamized road. The well-packed rocks, gravel, and tar, some four or five inches thick, were torn away and a sizeable hole made as if no roadway were there. A captive badger was given the run of a concrete basement. This seemed like a safe enough place. However, the animal found a crack and enlarged it until he was successful in removing a piece of concrete.