soiled white colour. This pale colour passes in the form of a band round the cheek and
over the eyes. A dark mark includes the eye and cheek, on each side, and there is also a
mark of a similar colour between the eyes, continued from the forehead. The dark colour
is produced by a mixture of grey, dark-brown and black hairs. The back is grizzled, its
fur consisting of dirty white hairs, ringed with black. The belly is considerably paler. The
tail is bushy, like the brush of a fox^ and has a dirty white colour, with about six dark rings
round it. The extremities are short, and all the feet have five toes, armed with long, strong
claws, fitted for burrowing. There is a fulness of the skin on the flanks, which adds to the
apparent shortness of the limbs. The animal walks on the hind and fore toes, .but when it sits,
brings the whole hind sole to the ground, and it often assumes an. erect posture like a Bear.
Carver quaintly describes the Raccoon as having the limbs of a beaver, the body of a
badger, the head of a fox, the nose of a dog, the tail of a cat, and sharp claws, by which it
climbs trees like a monkey.
Dimensions.
—. ,, . , •-.1 Feet. Inches. Feet. Inches.
Length of head ana body . . . . 2 0 { Length of tail (vertebrae) . . . 0 9 |
j, ; head . . . . 0 6 j Height of the back . .. . . • . 1 1
[12.] 1. M e l e s L a b r a d o r ia . (Sabine.) American Badger.
Genus. Meles; B u is so n .
Carcajou. Buwnr,-tom. vi. p. 117, pi. 23. (édit, de Paris en 36 voir 1749-1789.) Quadrupèdes enlum. 295.
Common Badger. P ennant’s Arctic Zoology, vol. i. p.,71.
Badger var. 73. American. P ennant’s .His*. Quadr.,vol. ii. p. 15.
Ursus Labradoricus. L in . Gmelin, vol. i. p. 102.
Prarow. Gass’s Journal, p. 34.
Blaireau. L ewis and Clarke’s Voyage, $c: vol; i. pp. 50, 137, 213.
Taxus Labradoricus. Say, Long's Exped., vol. i. p. 261.
Meles Labradoria. Sabine, Franklin's First Joum., p. 649. Harlan’s Fauna, p. 57.
American Badger. God man’s Nat. Hist., vol. i. p. 179.
Blaireau d’Amérique. F. Cuvier, Hist. Nat. des Mamm. cum figura.
Brairo et Siffleur. French Canadians.
Nannaspachæ-neeskæshew. Mistonusk, (also awawteèkoeoo, “ the animal that digs.”) Cree Indians.
Chocartoosh, Pawnees.
P late 2.
Biiffon, in the body of his great work, doubts whether the Badger be an
inhabitant of the American continent, notwithstanding that M. Brisson had