In Norway there are white, red, and black foxes, and also some with black lines along the back. Pontoppidan, who delights in the marvellous, relates several wonderful tales of these animals, and adds that they frequently catch lobsters with their tails. THE BADGER. The Badger is an indolent, diffident, solitary animal, who retires to the most secret places, and there digs for himself a subterraneous residence. He not only shuns society but even the light, spending three-fourths of life in his obscure retreat, and never venturing out but in search of food. He burrows the ground with great facility, as his body is elongated, his legs short, and the claws, those especially of his fore feet, are very long and compact; his habitation is often at a considerable distance from the surface, and the passage to it always oblique and winding. The fox, who is less expert at digging, often benefits from the labours of the badger; unable to force him to quit his retreat, he often drives him from it by stratagem. He stands sentinel, and defiles it with his ordure, which proves an infallible expedient. The badger gone, he takes possession, enlarges, and accommodates it for his own purpose. Though forced to remove, the badger leaves not the country, but digs himself a new habitation at a little distance, from which he never goes out but at night, even then not far, and returns upon the smallest appearance of danger. In this precaution alone consists his safety, for his legs being very short the dogs soon overtake him. Upon being attacked he throws himself backwards, and as his legs, claws, jaws, and teeth are very strong, he is enabled to fight with obstinacy, and it is seldom that he dies unrevenged. Formerly, when badgers were more common, terriers were trained up to hunt and take them in their burrows; but this was no easy task, as his mode of defence is to retire, and doing so, to undermine great quantities of earth, either to stop up the passage or bury the dogs under it. The only certain way of taking him is to open the hole above, after the dogs have driven him to the extremity. He is generally taken hold of with pincers, and then muzzled to prevent his biting. I have had several brought me taken in this manner, some of which I kept a long time. The young ones are easily tamed; they will play with dogs, and follow the person from whom they receive their food; but the old ones always retain their savage dispositions. They are neither mischievous nor voracious like the fox and the wolf, yet they are carnivorous; they prefer raw meat, but will eat flesh, eggs, cheese, butter, bread, fish, fruit, nuts, grain, roots, &c. They sleep the whole night and three parts of the day, yet they are not subject to a lethargic torpor during the winter, like the dormouse, or mountain rat; this makes them very fat, although they eat moderately, and they can go several days without food.