The steel trap in which the fox is caught resembles a common English rat-trap, less the teeth, and is so set, that the jaws, when spread out flat, are exactly on a level with the snow. The chain and weight are hidden, a little snow is swept over the trap, and nothing is visible but the bait--usually chips of frozen partridge, rabbit, or fish, which are scattered all around the snare. Foxes, beavers, wolves, lynx, and other animals, are thus taken, sometimes by a fore-leg, sometimes by a hind one, or by two at once, and occasionally by the nose. By two legs is the preferable way--for the trapper, that is to say--for then escape is impossible. "When foxes are caught by one leg, they often _eat it off_ close to the trap, and escape on the other three. I have frequently seen this happen; and I once saw a fox caught which had evidently escaped in this way, as one of its legs was gone, and the stump healed up and covered again with hair. When caught by the nose, they are almost sure to escape, unless taken out of the trap very soon after capture, as their snouts are so sharp and wedgelike, that they can pull them from between the jaws of the trap with the greatest ease." We are tempted to doubt the ease, or at any rate the pleasure, of such an operation, and to compassionate the unfortunate quadrupeds, whose only chance of escape from being knocked on the head lies in biting off their own feet, or scraping the skin off their jaws between those of a trap. The poor brutes have no chance of a fair fight, or even of a few yards' law and a run for their lives. Their hungry stomachs and keen olfactories touchingly appealed to by the scraps of frozen game, they eat their way to the trap, and finally put their foot in it. The trapper's trade is a sneaking sort of business; and one cannot but understand the feeling of self-humiliation of Cooper's Natty Bumpo, upon finding himself reduced from the rifle to the snare--from the stand-up fight in the forest to the stealthy prowl and treacherous trap. And hence, doubtless, do we find the occupation far more frequently followed by Indians and half-breeds than by white men--at least at Hudson's Bay. Nevertheless Mr Ballantyne, whilst enjoying dignified solitude in the remote station of Seven Islands, his French-Canadian servant and his Newfoundland dog Humbug for sole companions, received the visit of a trapper, who was not only white, but a gentleman to boot. This individual, who was dressed in aboriginal style, had been in the employ of a fur company, had married an Indian girl, and taken to trapping. He was a good-natured man, we are told, and had been well educated--talked philosophy, and put his new acquaintance up to the fact, that what he for some time had taken for a bank of sea-weed, was a shoal of kipling, close inshore. He stopped a week at the station, living on salt pork and flour-and-water pancakes, and telling his adventures to his gratified host, to whom, in his lonely condition,