I had once a badger in my own possession, and the study of his habits afforded me much interest and gratification. He was more than half grown when I obtained possession of him, and I can assure my readers that the task of taming him was no sinecure. The first agent I employed for effecting his domestication was hunger. I kept him fasting for three whole days, allowing him only a little water in his bowl, which humanity would not suffer me to deny him. Starvation, however, did not produce any immediate good effects, and the animal remained as fierce and irreconcilable as ever. It would but needlessly occupy the readers’ time were I minutely to recount the process of taming him; let it suffice to refer them to my late papers in this Journal on the taming of animals. I followed the rules therein laid down, and I had the satisfaction of finding them ultimately successful, after from six to eight months of anxious care, enlivened occasionally by the variety of a severe bite, a casualty for which every practical zoologist must be prepared, and at which it would be ridiculous for him to grumble. I have only to observe, that were any one to present me with a hundred pounds for the mark of every gash received by its teeth, of which the scars still remain on my hands and legs, I should be tolerably rich. After about eight months, however, he gave up his practice of constantly biting when attempted to be handled, unless under great provocation or excitement, and was not merely so gentle as to be with safety indulged with partial liberty, but would come and go when I called him or drove him from me, would feed from my hand or mount upon my knee, and was, moreover, soon afterwards entrusted with entire liberty without any danger of his running away. He was a very cleanly creature, carefully scraping into one end of his cage whatever unpleasant matters might collect in it, and he always contrived as much as possible to keep his bed free of soil. Finding him so remarkably cleanly, I used to let him out morning and evening, on such days as my absence from home obliged me to keep him in a state of confinement.