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 " The Wilderness Hunter," 

 — 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 " 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." 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 

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