32 THE FOX 



much on the nature of scenting power, and I think in 

 the economy of an animal's life it fills somewhat of 

 the same place as speech and reading do with us. 

 A fox reads, as it were, with his nose the informa- 

 tion he requires, and the older foxes gain more 

 and more skill in interpreting the indications given 

 by scent to their nostrils as time goes on. The 

 sense of smell is in the animal so infinitely more 

 effective than it is with man, that it is as difficult 

 for us to conceive what scent can tell them as it 

 is for the animal to understand our language. 

 Scent to the animal is language spoken and written, 

 and the nose fulfils part of the work which his eyes 

 do for man ; and as we learn by degrees to interpret 

 what we see, so does the fox what he smells. 

 Nothing is more certain in animal psychology than 

 that animals learn by experience, and that life and 

 time are for them, as for us, teachers. Thus the 

 young fox begins to learn to read Nature by her 

 odours, a power of which we have only an adumbra- 

 tion when the scent of a flower recalls the past. 

 The pictures called up to us by scents are but 

 dim compared with the vivid images the fox's brain 

 receives from them. We see how valuable this 

 delicate sense of smell is to an animal of nocturnal 

 habits. As the fox goes out on his nightly search 



