A BEAVER’S REASON 
has quite a different air. It at least does not look 
threatening; the rock is not impending; the open 
jaws are closed. More than that, the smell of the 
man’s hand would be less apparent, if not entirely 
absent. The fox drew no rational conclusions; its 
instinctive fear was allayed by the changed condi- 
tions of the trap. The hawk has not the fox’s cun- 
ning, hence it fell an easy victim. I do not think 
that the cunning of the fox is any more akin to 
reason than is the power of smell of the hound 
that pursues him. Both are inborn, and are quite 
independent of experience. If a fox were deliber- 
ately to seek to elude the hound by running through 
a flock of sheep, or by following the bed of a 
shallow stream, or by taking to the public high- 
way, then I think we should have to credit him 
with powers of reflection. It is true he often does 
all these things, but whether he does them by 
chance, or of set purpose, admits of doubt. 
The cunning of a fox is as much a part of his 
inherited nature as is his fleetness of foot. All the 
more notable fur-bearing animals, as the fox, the 
beaver, the otter, have doubtless been persecuted 
by man and his savage ancestors for tens of thou- 
sands of years, and their suspicion of traps and 
lures, and their skill in eluding them, are the accu- 
mulated inheritance of ages. 
In denying what we mean by thought or free 
intelligence to animals, an exception should un- 
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