M., and to be in Paris at 5:50 A.M.
* * * * *
DRAWING THE BADGER.
(_A Natural History Note_.)
[Illustration]
The Badger (_Meles-Taxus_) is at once one of the most inoffensive and (in
one sense) offensive of our few remaining British Carnivora. He is
described by NAPIER of Merchiston, in his _Book of Nature and of Man_, as a
"quiet nocturnal beast, but if much 'badgered' becoming obstinate, and
fighting to the last, in which it is a type of a large class of Britons,
who like to be let alone, but when ill used can fight."
That great new authority on Natural History, Mr. G.A. HENTY (author of
_Those Other Animals_), should be able to tell us much about the Badger.
Therewith he would be able, in his own favourite fashion, to "point a
moral" (against the Demogorgon Democracy), and "adorn a tale" (of laboured
waggery). He might find the subject as suggestive of sardonic chaff as
American women and Republican institutions.
What says the popular WOOD? He describes the Badger as "slow and clumsy in
its actions," and as "rolling along so awkwardly that it may easily be
mistaken for a young pig in the dusk of the evening." Woe, however, to
whomsoever _does_ take the creature for "a young pig.
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