WAYS OF NATURE 



can easi y believe the story Charles St. John tells of 

 the fox he saw waylaying some hares, and which, 

 to screen himself the more completely from his 

 quarry, scraped a small hollow in the ground and 

 threw up the sand about it. But if St. John had said 

 that the fox brought weeds or brush to make himself 

 a blind, as the hunter often does, I should have dis 

 credited him, just as I discredit the observation of 

 a man quoted by Romanes, who says that jackals, 

 ambushing deer at the latter s watering-place, de 

 liberately wait till the deer have filled themselves 

 with water, knowing that in that state they are more 

 easily run down and captured ! 



President Roosevelt, in &quot; The Wilderness Hunter,&quot; 

 a book, by the way, of even deeper interest to the 

 naturalist than to the sportsman, says that the 

 moose has to the hunter the &quot; very provoking habit 

 of making a half or three-quarters circle before lying 

 down, and then crouching with its head so turned 

 that it can surely perceive any pursuer who may fol 

 low its trail.&quot; This is the cunning of the moose 

 developed through long generations of its hunted 

 and wolf -pursued ancestors, a cunning that does 

 not differ from that of a man under the same circum 

 stances, though, of course, it is not the result of the 

 same process of reasoning. 



I have known a chipping sparrow to build her nest 

 on a grape-vine just beneath a bunch of small green 

 grapes. Soon the bunch grew and lengthened and 

 142 



