The following problem is taken from The Schoolmaster’s Assistant, being a Compendium of Arithmetic, both Practical and Theoretical, published in London in 1793, page 180:
A countryman having a fox, a goose, and a peck of corn, in his journey came to a river, where it so happened that he could carry but one item over at a time. Now, as no two items were to be left together that might destroy each other, he was at his wit’s end how to dispose of them: For, says he, though the corn cannot eat the goose, nor the goose eat the fox, yet the fox can eat the goose and the goose eat the corn. The question is, how must he must carry them across the river, so that none of them can devour another.
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