WAYS OF NATURE 
cannot. We can make its impulses follow a rut, so 
to speak, but we cannot make them free and self- 
directing. Animals are the victims of habits inher- 
ited or acquired. 
I was told of a fox that came nightly prowling 
about some deadfalls set for other game. The 
new-fallen snow each night showed the movements 
of the suspicious animal; it dared not approach 
nearer than several feet to the deadfalls. Then one 
day a red-shouldered hawk seized the bait in one 
of the traps, and was caught. That night a fox, 
presumably the same one, came and ate such parts 
of the body of the hawk as protruded from beneath 
the stone. Now, how did the fox know that the 
trap was sprung and was now harmless? Did not 
its act imply something more than instinct? We 
have the cunning and suspicion of the fox to start 
with; these are factors already in the problem that 
do not have to be accounted for. To the fox, as to 
the crow, anything that looks like design or a trap, 
anything that does not match with the haphazard 
look and general disarray of objects in nature, will 
put it on its guard. A deadfall is a contrivance that 
is not in keeping with the usual fortuitous disarray 
of sticks and stones in the fields and woods. The 
odor of the man’s hand would also be there, and 
this of itself would put the fox on its guard. But a 
hawk or any other animal crushed by a stone, with 
part of its body protruding from beneath the stone, 
222 
