o do any of
these things, but you could never enlighten her on the subject. The
rudest savage can, in a measure, be enlightened, he can be taught the
reason why of things, but an animal cannot. We can make its impulses
follow a rut, so to speak, but we cannot make them free and
self-directing. Animals are the victims of habits inherited or
acquired.

I was told of a fox that came nightly prowling about some deadfalls
set for other game. The new-fallen snow each night showed the
movements of the suspicious animal; it dared not approach nearer than
several feet to the deadfalls. Then one day a red-shouldered hawk
seized the bait in one of the traps, and was caught. That night a fox,
presumably the same one, came and ate such parts of the body of the
hawk as protruded from beneath the stone. Now, how did the fox know
that the trap was sprung and was now harmless? Did not its act imply
something more than instinct? We have the cunning and suspicion of the
fox to start with; these are factors already in the problem that do
not have to be accounted for. To the fox, as to the crow, anything
that looks like design or a trap, anything that does not match with
the haphazard look and general disarray of objects in nature, will put
it on its guard. A deadfall is a contrivance that is not in keeping
with the usual fortuitous disarray of sticks and stones in the fields
and woods. The odor of the man's hand would also be there, and this of
itself would put the fox on its guard. But a hawk or any other animal
crushed by a stone, with part of its body protruding from beneath the
stone, has quite a different air. It at least does not look
threatening; the rock is not impending; the open jaws are closed. More
than that, the smell of the man's hand would be less apparent, if not
entirely absent. The fox drew no rational conclusions; its instinctive
fear was allayed by the changed conditions of the trap. The hawk has
not the fox's cunning, hence it fell an easy victim. I do not think
that the cunning of the fox is any more akin to reason than is the
power of smell of the hound that pursues him. Both are inborn, and are
quite independent of experience. If a fox were deliberately to seek to
elude the hound by running through a flock of sheep, or by following
the bed of a shallow stream, or by taking to the public highway, then
I think we should have to credit him with powers of reflection. It is
true he often does all these things, but wheth