re 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 creatures,
which it follows by scent or sight. It can neither see nor smell crabs
in the deep water, where crabs are usually found. How should it know
that there are such things as crabs? How should it know that they can
be taken with bait and line or by fishing for them? When and how did
it get this experience? This knowledge belongs to man alone. It comes
through a process of reasoning that he alone is capable of. Man alone
of land animals sets traps and fishes. There is a fish called the
angler (_Lophius piscatorius_), which, it is said on doubtful
authority, by means of some sort of appendages on its head angles for
small fish; but no competent observer has reported any land animal
doing so. Again, would a crab lay hold of a mass of fur like a fox's
tail?--even if the tail could be thrust deep enough into the water,
which is impossible. Crabs, when not caught with hand-nets, are
usually taken in water eight or ten feet deep. They are baited and
caught with a piece of meat tied to a string, but cannot be lifted to
the surface till they are eating the meat, and then a dip-net is
required to secure them. The story, on the whole, is one of the most
preposterous that ever gained credence in natural history.

[3] A book published in London in 1783, 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."

Good observers are probably about as rare as good poets. Accurate
seeing,--an eye that takes in the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth,--how rare indeed it is! So few persons know or can tell
exactly what they see; so few persons can draw a right inference from
an observed fact; so few persons can keep from reading their own
thoughts and preconceptions into what they see; only a person with the
scientific habit of mind can be trusted to report things as they are.
Most of us, in observing the wil