[Ref-users] Home might be likened to a cottage nestling among trees at the end of an embowe

[Barrineau L. <rad...@ma...>]

To be a terrier--a
good rabbit
"marker," and wonderfully quick in killing rats, but no more suited than the sportman's spaniel for "lying up" with
a badger. Undoubtedly, however, the security of some of our most interesting

wild animals, and especially of the badger, is to be accounted for by their extreme shyness. They venture abroad only when the shadows of night lie over the woods. For countless years, dogs and men have been their greatest foes, and their fear of them is found to be almost as strong in remote districts as where, near towns, their
existence is continually threatened. Wild life
in our quiet valley will be deemed of unusual interest when I say that less
than six hours before writing these lines I visited a badger's "set"--a deep underground hollow with several main passages and upper galleries, where, as I have good reason to believe, a fox also dwells--an otter's "holt" beneath gnarled alder-roots fringing the river-bank, and another fox's "earth," all on
the outskirts of a wooded belt not more than a
mile from my home, and all showing signs

of having long been inhabited. Unless systematically persecuted, the fox, the otter, and the badger cling
to their respective haunts with such tenacity that, season after season, they prowl along the same familiar paths through the woods
or by the river, and rear their young
in the same retreats. This is the case
especially with the badger; from the traditions of the countryside, as well as from the careful observation of sporting landowners, it may be learned that for generations certain inaccessible "sets" have seldom, if ever, been uninhabited. Always at nightfall the "little man in grey" has climbed the slanting passage from his cave-like chamber, ten or--if among the bou