A badger may come to a neighbourhood and stay for a long while unnoticed. He prowls at night, unseen and unsuspected, and people may suppose there is no badger within miles. In the same way otters are at home in many a stream where nobody dreams there is an otter in the neighbourhood. But let the badger's presence be discovered, and he will be persecuted to the end. The wise badger shifts his tent at once if a human nose is poked into it; all badgers would profit if they went to the fox for a few wrinkles. The foxes have a maxim: Never be at home to callers who may come again. A visiting-card, in the shape of a particle of scent, is more than enough acquaintance for a fox with a human being. Even the gamekeeper often harbours a badger unknowingly. What he does not suspect he does not look for. And if he were to look for a month for signs of a badger he might never find one. Again and again he might pass within sight of a badger's holt, and think it to be the retreat of a fox. But by chance he might come upon a clear imprint of a badger's tracks, and after that it would not take him long to discover the badger's lair. While not a friend of the badger, he has no such bitter resentment against him as he feels for the fox. If it were not that the badger every now and then commits an outrage that brings disgrace on himself and all his kith and kin, the record of his life might be written down as fairly harmless. In these days the badger can make small claim as a provider of sport, which might mitigate the sentence most keepers pass upon him. We knew of a badger who lived in peace, his presence unsuspected, for many long months. Then a series of mysterious poultry massacres began to disturb the district, and sometimes a dozen chickens and ducklings would be slain in one night. Some said fox, others dog; strange stories of ghosts spread abroad; it was even hinted that a wolf had been imported by mistake with foreign foxes. But one day tracks were seen that were not the tracks of fox, dog, or wolf, and a trail of feathers led to the discovery of a hidden draw-out. The badger was evicted and summarily shot. * * * * * To Attract Bullfinches The bullfinch is not always made welcome when he comes to gardens at the time of fruit-buds. And there are seasons and places in which he would be welcomed--but comes not. We know a way to attract bullfinches, even to gardens in towns. You should take from a hedge-side a few plants of the wild geranium, and set them in your town garden--bullfinches are wonderfully fond of their seeds. We have known the birds to find out the geranium plants in a town garden where bullfinches had never been seen before. To this garden they would come regularly, but always in the early morning. They are cheerful feeders--they live on insects and larvæ, as well as on many kinds of seeds and berries, in the spring feeding their young on seeds which have been carefully softened.