WAYS OF NATURE 
There is probably nothing in human experience, 
at this age of the world, that is like the helpless terror 
that seizes the rabbits as it does other of our lesser 
wild creatures, when pursued by any of the weasel 
tribe. They seem instantly to be under some fatal 
spell which binds their feet and destroys their will 
power. It would seem as if a certain phase of nature 
from which we get our notions of fate and cruelty 
had taken form in the weasel. 
The rabbit, when pursued by the fox or by the 
dog, quickly takes to hole. Hence, perhaps, the wit 
of the fox that a hunter told me about. The story was 
all written upon the snow. A mink was hunting a 
rabbit, and the fox, happening along, evidently took 
in the situation at a glance. He secreted himself 
behind a tree or a rock, and, as the rabbit came 
along, swept her from her course like a charge of 
shot fired at close range, hurling her several feet over 
the snow, and then seizing her and carrying her to 
his den up the mountain-side. 
It would be interesting to know how long our 
chimney swifts saw the open chimney-stacks of the 
early settlers beneath them before they abandoned 
the hollow trees in the woods and entered the chim- 
neys for nesting and roosting purposes. Was the act 
an act of judgment, or simply an unreasoning im- 
pulse, like so much else in the lives of the wild crea- 
tures ? 
In the choice of nesting-material the swift shows 
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