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foot of a sand-bank. In spring or autumn a moonlight night may serve as well, but the badger is a late riser, and one may wait long and see nothing. When earthstopping for night-hunting, it was little use as a rule to get to work until a good hour after dark. If done earlier we seldom found any animals out.

Above all things, the direction of the wind must be taken into account when choosing one's position. A badger's eyes are dull, but his long sensitive nose is the keenest that sifts the night, and the faintest suspicion of an alien presence is enough for him. It is a good plan to climb a tree, if possible, for there one's scent is carried away by the breeze. Unless provided with a rifle it is not desirable to attempt a long shot, nor should one use very large pellets. No. 4 size will be found big enough. A larger load is less accurate, being too liable to scatter and wound rather than kill.

Badger-hunting with hounds at night is not bad fun. Riding is impossible, of course, nor can one actually see much; but it is real sport, and the musicthe indescribable crash and cry of hounds running through the still, dark woods-is something to be remembered. It is a practically unheard-of sport, nowadays. I have known of but two packs in my time, both of which have vanished long since. They were recruited from draft hounds of every description, and disbanded at the end of each season. Long runs there were none, and the grey was soon overhauled unless he could find refuge of any sort, but for all that, it was even-chanced enough. As often as not the hounds declined to tackle their formidable quarry when actually overtaken, and after a running interchange of pleasantries which continued sometimes for a mile or more, he would eventually beat them by getting to ground, the stopping being of a most perfunctory nature.

The badger, for his size, must be the most powerful animal in the world. His structure is particularly adapted for defence, the highly vulnerable under parts being shielded by his peculiarly low and crouching action. Excepting deer, he is the largest wild animal still existing in Great Britain, ranging in weight from twenty-five to thirty-five pounds, according to locality Though wildest of living things he is also the bravest

and when cornered in a hole beyond hope of escape, he walks boldly out to meet his doom, if permitted to do so. He is resolute in all things, and having once made up his mind to go in any particular direction, it is nearly impossible to turn him from his purpose.

One of the two peculiarities which he shares with the weasels is his extreme sensibility to a blow across the bridge of the nose. This, if properly delivered, will cause instant death, but some anatomical knowledge is necessary to despatch him thus, lacking which, an amateur is apt to make a terrible mess of it. Once-a memory which still causes a shudder-I saw a badger receive several smashing blows from a crowbar with no visible effect whatsoever. On this occasion the blows were delivered too near the skull. The right spot found, violence is unnecessary. Here is an instance: It occurred while earth-stopping prior to hunting, when badgers, realising the situation, at times make determined efforts to get to ground while the work is actually in progress. On this occasion a young boar suddenly burst into the circle of light shed by the lanterns, and ran boldly from hole to hole, bent upon gaining the bosom of Mother Earth while yet he might. He cared nothing for shouts ; clods and stones were alike ignored; he might, indeed, have been alone in the woods for all the notice he took of anybody. At last he espied an open hole, for which he made, indifferent to the fact that a man bestrode it. The man, after vainly endeavouring to turn him by other means, struck at his face with a stick which happened to be handy. It was a mere rap, one might say, but to the astonishment of all concerned poor Badger turned two or three complete somersaults, then straightened out upon his very doorstep, stone dead.

How long a badger may live in the wild state if let alone is a difficult point to decide. Some naturalists allot him fifteen years, but it is doubtful whether many attain to anything approaching such longevity. Left to Nature, his decline is easy, his passing imperceptible. As old age creeps on, his periods of setivity gradually lessen. He sleeps the greater part of his time, retiring earlier and emerging later every succeeding season, until at last there dawns a spring when the call of the awakening world fails to arouse him. DOUGLAS GORDON.

Art. 3.-HOUSING.

THE question of Housing, or more accurately of the Housing of the Working Classes, is a very old one in British politics. For at least eighty years it has figured in Parliamentary debates. It has been the subject of a great deal of legislation. It has frequently occupied the attention of Royal Commissions and other forms of inquiry. It has often been a burning question at elections. It affects very closely the duties and actions of local authorities throughout the country. It has gone through many phases, and the housing problem of which we speak to-day is in many respects quite a different one from that which existed before the War, or rather before the year 1910. Up to that date the chief problem was how to get rid of slums, of insanitary areas, which unfortunately existed in most of our towns and cities and in a smaller degree in many country districts. This problem is still with us, but is overshadowed by the acute house shortage with which we have been confronted in recent years. The provision of new houses in sufficient numbers to keep pace with the requirements of our people is more important at the moment than the clearance of slums, important as that is. Slum clearance, which necessarily involves demolition, is obviously handicapped and impeded by the fact that there are not enough existing houses, good, bad, or indifferent, to go round, and that the supply has not been keeping pace with the annual demand.

Up to the middle of the last century the State did not actively concern itself in the housing question. The provision of houses was a matter entirely for private enterprise, which was allowed to build where it would, and as it would, without restriction or regulation. There was, indeed, a complete indifference to questions of public health. This was undoubtedly the cause of many of those terrible epidemics which ravaged the country in years gone by, such as the Plague of London in the reign of Charles II. For the same reason there was at all times an immense amount of preventable illness and mortality, and the average death rate was infinitely higher than it is to-day. So long, however, as the country was sparsely inhabited and the rate of increase

of the population was slow, the results of this were small and not ordinarily apparent. With the tremendous expansion of industry brought about by the use of steam power and the wonderful new inventions which followed the termination of the Napoleonic Wars, the whole aspect of the question changed. There was a vast increase of population, and the people had to be housed in close proximity to the mills, factories, and mines, which were being established all over what we now call the industrial districts. House builders set to work in our great towns to provide for this need, and in the absence of building regulations they put up as many houses to the acre as they could possibly cram in, with narrow roads and in many cases no roads at all, the houses being situated in small stuffy courts approached through archways, so that neither sunshine nor fresh air, God's greatest gifts to man, could penetrate. In many cases the houses were built back to back, which rendered through ventilation impossible. This is the origin of our slums or insanitary areas, plague-spots physically and morally, which are a disgrace to civilisation. Private enterprise, it is often said (especially by Socialist orators anxious to push their nationalisation or municipalisation nostrums), gave them to us; but it was unrestricted and unregulated private enterprise. They cannot be created anywhere in this country now. Building Acts and bye-laws have long rendered it impossible. Because private enterprise left uncontrolled in the past gave us slums, it does not follow that we should abandon it now. If we do we shall probably get neither slums nor houses of any sort in the future, except at a cost which will ruin the State and in a manner which will pauperise the whole nation.

The first person to call prominent attention to the need of proper housing accommodation was Dr Southwood Smith, whose strenuous efforts led to the passing of the Public Health Act in 1848. His grand-daughter, Miss Octavia Hill, carried on his work, and was the originator of the movement for improved industrial dwellings, in which others, such as George Peabody, the great American philanthropist, and Lord Rowton took a prominent part. The plans she adopted were based on the principle of teaching people to help themselves by inculcating in them proper notions of cleanliness,

order, and self-respect. Her efforts were crowned with singular success, and thousands of people have been housed in decent homes and helped to lead more comfortable and better lives. To the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury belongs the credit of having passed the first Housing Act in 1851, a small measure dealing with common lodging-houses. He was followed by Mr W. T. M. Torrens, who, in 1868 and 1879, in both of which years a Conservative Government headed by Mr Disraeli was in power, was responsible for Acts enabling individual insanitary houses to be dealt with; while in 1875 and 1879 Lord Cross, the Conservative Home Secretary, carried through the measures which first gave to local authorities powers to deal with insanitary areas by means of clearance schemes. Mr Disraeli had indeed long before, in his well-known book 'Sybil,' called attention to the condition of the people,' as he described it, and had urged the necessity of what is now termed 'Social Reform.' His ideas had been scoffed at by the philosophical Radicals of the Manchester School as a 'policy of sewage,' and it was not till over thirty years after the publication of 'Sybil' that he obtained a majority which enabled him to carry these ideas into practice. He was the first British Prime Minister to bring forward a housing policy, and may in some ways be regarded as its author. His policy was carried further by his successor, Lord Salisbury, whose Government was responsible for the great consolidating and amending Act of 1890, Part I of which dealt with the subjectmatter of Cross's Acts, namely, large insanitary areas; Part II with small groups or even single houses which had been previously dealt with by Torrens's Acts; while Part III extended the power of local authorities to build themselves and so to provide new accommodation, which had first been conferred on them by one of Lord Shaftesbury's Acts.

How serious were the evils with which Parliament had to deal may be learnt from some of the evidence given by Lord Shaftesbury before the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes in 1884. This Commission was notable from the fact that the late King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, whose deep interest in questions of social welfare is well known, was

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