But now comes the second plan—not quite so perfect as the other, as the fox may get a pellet or two in its skin, but, perhaps, involving even a greater degree of intelligence. Instead of going to the gun, the fox, in this case, digs a trench in the snow up to the meat, which it then seizes and pulls into the trench, where it lies flat. The gun goes off, but the fox is not hurt, for—and this is the most wonderful part of it—it has drawn the trench at right angles to the muzzle of the gun—to the line of fire, that is to say—so that the shot, instead of raking the channel, as it would do if it were in a straight line with the gun and string, only strikes the edge of the cutting, and goes flying over it. If men were besieging a hostile town, and wished to approach it under cover of a trench, so as to avoid, as much as possible, the bullets from the walls, this is just how they would manage it. They would not, any more than the foxes, draw it all in one line with the line of fire, for then the bullets would fly down, instead of over it, and every man in it would be killed. The brain of the fox, therefore, as far as this particular thing is concerned, is equal to that of man, and as the trench is always drawn in the same way, we may be sure that mere chance has nothing to do with it. The reason why the fox is able to draw the meat into the trench before the gun goes off, is that the cord which connects the bait with the trigger is always a little longer than the distance between the two, for if it were not, as it is liable to shrink during changes of the atmosphere, when the weather changes from dry to moist, the gun would sometimes go off of itself. As a rule, therefore, the meat can be moved five or six inches, without anything happening, and this just allows the fox to pull it down into the ditch, where he lies with it, out of harm’s way. So here are two quite different ways—each as cunning as can well be imagined—by which the fox gets the better of the trapper, and though the human element enters into such episodes as these, they still make part of the romance of animal life, seeing that the life of an animal whose skin is in demand is one long pitched battle with man.