A Letter from Mr. Long 
where the head and tail were. Neglect of this habit 
cost the life of one porcupine that I have seen. It 
was in deep, soft snow. A fisher attacked the por- 
cupine, which struck his head against a log and kept 
his tail flat to the ground, ready to strike. The fisher 
tunneied deep in the snow, passed under 
the tail and body of the porcupine, stuck 
his head out of the snow under the por- 
cupine’s throat, gripped him, and killed 
him without receiving a single barb. 
Mr. Burroughs will call this a lie 
because he has not seen it. Fortunately 
Mr. Young, the guide referred to, once 
saw the same thing in a different locality. 
The critic accuses Mr. Seton of deliberate falsehood 
and misrepresentation. While I differ radically from 
Mr. Seton in many of his observations and theories of 
animals, my notes, covering a period of twenty years 
of close watching of animals, bear out some of the 
things which Mr. Burroughs assures us are pure inven- 
tions. The fox, for instance, that deliberately led the 
hounds in front of a train is ridiculed as a piece of pure 
absurdity. Yet two dogs of mine were killed by the 
same fox in this way at different times, and a third in 
a way much more remarkable. There was also a fox 
in West Upton, Mass., in the winters of 1887-1890 
that would play around the hills until he heard the 
hoot of a distant train, when he would lead the hounds 
straight for the railroad tracks. He succeeded in kill- 
ing one of them, at least, to my own s 
knowledge. 
Mr. Burroughs is quite as far astray 
about the fox in many other partic- & 
ulars. Heclaims that a fox knowsa & By on'y, 
trap by inherited knowledge. Now @Se** 
a fox is like a caribou in that he u®* 
believes only his nose. When he avoids a trap it is 
not because he knows it 1s a man’s invention, but for 
exactly the opposite reason, namely, that it has a smell 
on it that he does not know. Put the same trap in 
shallow running water to take away the unknown smell, 
put a bit of green moss from a stone upon it, and a 
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