384 NATURAL SCIENCE. December, 



in view. It seems probable that experience has taught the fox that 

 the particular creatures which pursue it do so by following the scent 

 of its trail. Leroy's stag had probably acquired the same knowledge 

 or percept. Both animals, therefore, acquire the habit of protection 

 against being followed by scent. The devices which the fox can 

 employ habitually in this way are too well known to require much 

 exemplification. I shall, however, while shunning the familiar 

 examples, take a single instance related to me by the eye-witness, a 

 relative of my own, and a member of the Linlithgow and Stirling- 

 shire Hunt. The hounds were drawing a cover on the south side of 

 the Union Canal near Ratho. A fox broke cover, made straight for 

 the canal and swam across. The hounds were taken along the side of 

 the canal a short distance in a westerly direction, to where a tunnel 

 passed below it. Through this they were taken to the other side of 

 the canal and run back to the point opposite that at which the fox had 

 plunged in. Here they at once found, but carried the scent along 

 the bank in an easterly direction only for a short distance, attempts to 

 trace it further being quite unsuccessful. M}^ informant, who had 

 been on the east side of the cover when the hounds were led off to the 

 tunnel, and who had remained there to see if the hounds would 

 •' find ' on the other side of the canal, noticed a wet fox coming from 

 the direction of the canal and making off towards the fields at the 

 back of the cover. The hounds were therefore brought back to his 

 side of the canal. There they ' picked up the scent,' and the whole 

 company was presently heading towards Juniper Green. It happens, 

 however, that the trail of a wet fox is difficult to follow, and, after the 

 hounds had run through several gardens on the outskirts of the village 

 of Juniper Green, reynard was given up. There seems no reason to 

 suppose that the wet fox was any other than' that started from the 

 cover, which, recognising that the pursuers had gained the far side 

 of the canal, swam quickly back to the side from which he had 

 started. 



If we attempt to estimate what a ruse of this description in- 

 volves, we must first note that while in the cover, the fox, by means 

 of its sense of hearing, smell, or sight, became aware of the approach 

 of danger. The instincts of fear and of self-preservation then caused 

 action. The conditions of wariness under which it lives, and the 

 acuteness of its senses, unimpaired by any artificial conditions of life, 

 probably enabled it to apprehend danger before the hounds became 

 aware of its presence. At the same time, its intelligence, benefiting 

 by experiences of life in a fox-hunting district and by association of 

 circumstances, would enable it to form a more or less definite 

 construct or series of constructs. Such constructs would be in some 

 degree analogous to our human constructs, ' hounds ' and ' hunters ' ; 

 they would conform in a measure to our conceptions of the interpre- 

 tations of these terms. The same experience rendered it unnecessary 

 for the fox to define its constructs by examination — a feature 



