“The real damage wrought by the badger is microscopic. His diet mainly consists of roots, green herbs, mice, frogs, and insects. Like the fox, he has a great partiality for whorts and blackberries when in season, and he is particularly fond of grubs. For the sake of these he will dig out every wasp’s nest he can find. A considerable number of rabbit ‘stops’ also fall to his share, and in unearthing the latter he practises a somewhat remarkable piece of woodcraft. The hole which contains the nest may run to the depth of several feet, and the nest itself be situated ten feet from any entrance, but this does not trouble the badger. He makes no attempt to follow the tortuous passage, as a man when digging would be obliged to do. His unerring nose locates the exact spot where the young rabbits lie, and from the most convenient point he bores for them. Should it be a ‘ground-burrow,’ he sinks a vertical shaft. In the case of a steep bank he drives a horizontal tunnel, and, shallow or deep, with unvarying accuracy. “Not long ago I saw a striking case of this on Haldon Hill, near Exeter. The burrow opened on to a little gully, and ran back some distance under the heath. At least five paces from the nearest hole was the badger’s freshly cut shaft, about three feet deep, and around it were littered the ruins of the nest—the little tale of bloodstained fur so eloquent of tragedy. There on the earth drawn from the shaft the raider’s spoor was plain enough, but no imprint of his pads could I find upon the impressionable mould anywhere near the holes. This meant that he must have found the nest while traversing the heather—sensed it beneath him, in fact. And here an interesting point arises. What sense did he employ? Could he possibly ‘smell’ the rabbits through three feet of packed mould? Earth is a potent deodoriser. Do certain animals possess a sixth sense—a sympathy something akin to that of the divining rod? If so, this goes farther to explain the much-discussed principle of scent than anything yet suggested.”