430 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 



the snow showed that fox No. 2, notwithstanding the temp- 

 tation offered by the bait, had expended a great deal of scientific 

 observation on the gun before he undertook to sever the cord. 

 Lastly, with regard to burrowing at right angles to the line of 

 fire. Dr. Rae justly deemed this so extraordinary a circumstance ^ 

 that he repeated the experiment a number of times, in order to 

 satisfy himself that the direction of the burrowing was really to 

 be attributed to thought, and not to chance.^ 



* I have requested Dr. Rae to write out all the particulars of these 

 remarkable observations, and the following is the response which he 

 has kindly made : — 'When trapping foxes in Hudson's Bay it sometimes 

 happens that certain of these acute animals, probably from having seen 

 their companions caught, studiously avoid the ordinary steel and wooden 

 traps, however carefully set. The trapper then sets one or more guns 

 in a peculiar manner, having a line 15 or 20 yards long uniting the 

 trigger with a bait, on taking hold of which the fox sets the gun oflf^ 

 and commits suicide. The double object of the bait being placed so 

 near the gun is that the fox may be certainly killed — not wounded 

 only — and that the head alone should be hit, and the body not riddled 

 all over with shot, which would spoil the skin. It is also necessary to 

 mention that four or five inches of slack line must be allowed for 

 contraction of the line by change from a dry to a moist atmosphere, 

 which otherwise would cause so great a strain on the trigger that the 

 gun would be discharged without the bait being touched. So as to 

 conceal as far as possible all connection between bait and gun, that 

 part of the line next the bait is carefully hid under the snow. 



* When the fox takes the bait, he will have lifted it five inches (the 

 length of the slack line) from its normal position before the gun goes 

 off ; consequently, instead of pointing the gun at the bait, it is aimed 

 fully eight or nine inches higher, at the probable position of the brain 

 of the animal when the gun is discharged. 



' For reasons which scarcely require explanation, foxes very gene- 

 rally go about in pairs (long before the snow disappears), not necessarily 

 always close together, because they have a better chance of finding 

 food if separated some distance from each other. 



' After one or more foxes have been shot, the trapper on visiting his 

 guns perhaps finds that a fox has first cut the line connecting the bait 

 with the gun, and then gone up and eaten the bait ; or, if the gun has 

 been set on a drift bank of snow, he or she has scraped a trench ten or 

 twelve inches deep up to the bait, taken hold of it whilst lying in the 

 trench, set the gun off, and then trotted coolly away with the food 

 (taken, one may say, from the gun's mouth) safe and uninjured, as is 

 clearly evinced by there being no mark of blood on the tracks. 



* In pulling the bait whilst in the trench, the fox would drag it five 

 inches, or the length of the slack line, downwards, and therefore his 

 head and nose would be completely out of harm's way, both because of 

 the snow protection, and also these parts of his body being twelve or 

 thirteen inches below the line of aim. 



* In the cases seen by myself, and by a friend of greater experience,^, 

 the trench was always scraped at right angles, or nearly so, to the line 

 of fire of the gun. This at first sight may appear erroneous, but on 



