130 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
the snow showed that fox No. 2, notwithstanding the temp* 
tation offered by the bait, had expended a great deal of scientific 
observation on the gun before he undertook to sever the cord. 
Lastly, with regard to burrowing at right angles to the line of 
fire, Dr. Dae justly deemed this so extraordinary a circumstance, 
that he repeated the experiment a number of times, in order to 
satisfy himself that the direction of the burrowing was really to 
be attributed to thought, and not to chance. 1 
1 I have requested Dr. Rae to write out all the particulars of these 
remarkable observations, and the following is the response which he 
has kindly made : — ‘When trapping foxes in Hudson’s Bay it sometimes 
happens that certain of these acute animals, probably from having seen 
their companions caught, studiously avoid the ordinary steel and wooden 
traps, however carefully set. The trapper then sets one or more guns 
in a peculiar manner, having a line 15 or 20 yards long uniting the 
trigger with a bait, on taking hold of which the Jox sets the gun off, 
and commits suicide. The double object of the bait being placed so 
near the gun is that the fox may be certainly killed — not wounded 
only- and that the head alone should be hit, and the body not riddled 
all over with shot, which would spoil the skin. It is also necessary to 
mention that lour or five inches of slack line must be allowed for 
contraction of the line by change from a dry to a moist atmosphere, 
which otherwise would cause so great a strain on the trigger that the 
gun would be discharged without the bait being touched. So as to 
conceal as far as possible all connection between bait and gun, that 
part of the line next the bait is carefully hid under the snow. 
‘ When the fox takes the bait, he will have lifted it five inches (the 
length of the slack line) from its normal position before the gun goes 
off ; consequently, instead of pointing the gun at the bait, it is aimed 
fully eight or nine inches higher, at the probable position of the brain, 
of the animal when the gun is discharged. 
‘ For reasons which scarcely require explanation, foxes very gene- 
rally go about in pairs (long before the snow disappears), not necessarily 
always close together, because they have a better chance of finding 
food if separated some distance from each other. 
‘ After one or more foxes have been shot, the trapper on visiting his 
guns perhaps finds that a fox has first cut the line connecting the bait 
with the gun, and then gone up and eaten the bait ; or, if the gun has 
been set on a drift bank of snow, he or she has scraped a trench ten or 
twelve inches deep up to the bait, taken hold of it whilst lying in the 
trench, set the gun off, and then trotted coolly away with the food 
(taken, one may say, from the gun’s mouth) safe and uninjured, as is 
clearly evinced by there being no mark of blood on the tracks. 
‘ In pulling the bait whilst in the trench, the fox would drag it five 
inches, or the length of the slack line, downwards , and therefore his 
head \ and nose would be completely out of harm’s way, both because of 
the snow protection, and also these parts of his body being twelve or 
thirteen inches below the line of aim. 
‘ In the cases seen by myself, and by a friend of greater experience, 
the trench was always scraped at right angles, or nearly so, to the line 
of fire of the gun. This at first sight may appear erroneous, but on 
