Acheria, the fox, went partnership with a bear in a bowl of milk. Before the bear arrived, the fox skimmed off the cream and drank the milk; then, filling the bowl with mud, replaced the cream atop. Says the fox, "Here is the bowl; one shall have the cream, and the other all the rest: choose, friend, which you like." The bear told the fox to take the cream, and thus bruin had only the mud.--A Basque Tale.

¶ A similar tale occurs in Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands (iii. 98), called "The Keg of Butter." The wolf chooses the bottom when "oats" were the object of choice, and the top when "potatoes" were the sowing.

¶ Rabelais tells the same take about a farmer and the devil. Each was to have on alternate years what grew under and over the soil. The farmer sowed turnips and carrots when the under-soil produce came to his lot, and barley or wheat when his turn was the over-soil produce.