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 implies! Now the fox is entirely 
a land animal, and lives by preying upon land crea- 
1 A book published in London in 1788, 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 
