With the appearance and form of this animal most of my readers are doubtless tolerably acquainted, as it is a pretty common inhabitant of this country, and would be still more abundant, were not its numbers checked by that barbarous and brutal amusement, badger-baiting, to which, despite the interference of the laws, hundreds yearly fall victims. In general appearance as well as internal structure the badger approximates closely to the bear, and may, I think not unaptly, be regarded as the existing representative of that once formidable denizen of the wilds of our native land. Like the bear, the badger walks upon his heels and his legs being very short, and his hair remarkably thick and long, his belly appears almost to touch the ground; a little observation is however sufficient to show that it does not actually do so. He is a nocturnal animal, that is to say, he sleeps during the day, and at the approach of evening leaves his habitation in search of food; yet nocturnal though his habits, and however closely he may in that respect resemble the predacious tribes, the food of the badger is of such a description that its appropriation injures no one, but is on the contrary productive of great benefit to the agriculturist, consisting as it does chiefly, if not solely, of roots and reptiles, as frogs, worms, grubs, beetles, &c. The badger is as far as I have been able to discover, monogamous, lives affectionately with his mate and little ones in his secluded burrow, and in his deportment to them displays feelings of ardent devotion and disinterested attachment which many of this poor creature’s biped persecutors would do well to imitate.