Every one acquainted with gamekeepers’ duties is well aware that the iron traps armed with teeth which are in general use throughout the country are a disgrace to nineteenth-century civilisation.  It is a terrible experience to take a rabbit or any other animal out of one of these relics of barbarism.  Sir Herbert Maxwell recently called the attention of game preservers and keepers to a patent trap which Colonel Coulson, of Newburgh, has just invented.  Instead of teeth, the jaws of the new trap have pads of corrugated rubber, which grip as tightly and effectively as the old contrivance without breaking the bones or piercing the skin.  I trust these traps will shortly supersede the old ones, so that a portion of the inevitable suffering of the furred denizens of our woods may be dispensed with.

In a hunting country where foxes occasionally find their way into vermin traps, Colonel Coulson’s invention should be invaluable.  Instead of having to be destroyed, or being killed by the hounds in covert, owing to a broken leg, it is ten to one that Master Reynard would be released very little the worse for his temporary confinement.  Moreover, as Sir Herbert Maxwell points out, dog owners will be grateful to the inventor when their favourites accidentally find their way into one of these traps and are released without smashed bones and bleeding feet.  Any kind of trap is but a diabolical contrivance at best, but these “humane patents” are a vast improvement, and do the work better than the old, as I can testify, having used them from the time Sir Herbert Maxwell first called attention to them, and being quite satisfied with them.

Badgers are almost as mysterious in their ways and habits as the otter.  Nobody believes there are badgers about except those who look for their characteristic tracks about the fox-earths.  Every now and then, however, a badger is dug out or discovered in some way in places where they were unheard of before.  We have one here now.

A few years ago I saw a pack of foxhounds find a badger in Chearsley Spinneys in Oxfordshire.  They hunted him round and round for about ten minutes.  I saw him just in front of the hounds; a great, fine specimen he was too.  As far as I remember, the hounds killed him in covert, and then went away on the line of a fox.

A year or two ago three fine young badgers were captured near Bourton-on-the-Water, on the Cotswolds.  When I was shown them I was told they would not feed in confinement.  Finding a large lobworm, I picked it up and gave it to one of them.  He ate it with the utmost relish.  His brown and grey little body shook with emotion when I spoke to him kindly—­just as a dog trembles when you pet him.  I am not certain, however, whether the badger trembled out of gratitude for the lobworm or out of rage and disgust at being confined in a cage.

Badgers would make delightful pets if they had a little less scent:  nature, as everybody knows, has endowed them with this quality to a remarkable degree; they have the power of emitting or retaining it at their own discretion.