WAYS OF NATURE 



This is simply the human idea of ' murder.' Animals 

 kill one another for food, or in rivalry, or in blind 

 ferocity of predatory disposition ; but there is not a 

 particle of evidence that they ' commit murder ' for 

 ulterior ends. It is questionable whether they com- 

 prehend the condition called death, or its nature, 

 in any proper sense." 



On another occasion I laughed at a recent nature 

 writer for his credulity in half-believing the story 

 told him by a fisherman, that the fox catches crabs 

 by using his tail as a bait ; and yet I read in Romanes 

 that Olaus, in his account of Norway, says he has 

 seen a fox do this very thing among the rocks on the 

 sea-coast.^ One would like to cross-question Olaus 

 before accepting such a statement. One would as 

 soon expect a fox to put his brush in the fire as in the 

 water. When it becomes wet and bedraggled, he is 

 greatly handicapped as to speed. There is no doubt 

 that rats will put their tails into jars that contain 

 liquid food they want, and then lick them off, as 

 Romanes proved; but the rat's tail is not a brush, 

 nor in any sense an ornament. Think what the 

 fox-and-crab story impUes ! Now the fox is entirely 

 a land animal, and lives by preying upon land crea- 



^ A book piibUshecl in London in 1783, entitled A Geographical, 

 Historical, and Commercial Grammar and the Present State of the 

 Several Kingdoms of the World, among other astonishing natural 

 history notes, makes this statement about the white and red fox of 

 Norway : " They have a particular way of drawing crabs ashore 

 by dipping their tails in the water, which the crab lays hold of." 



106 



