taking the place of the first. There is no doubt, however, that if the people would make it a rule to watch over the formation of habits in cats during the first weeks (and probably also in other animals and in children), it would not afterwards be necessary to have recourse to a system of barbarous, and often useless measures, in order to obtain from them by violence that which nature will manage alone with but very slight assistance.
The shutters are closed on account of the extreme heat, so that the room is in semidarkness, and all the objects in it steeped in mysterious shadow. Riquet, frisking about at a little distance from the box, sees a footstool at about a mètre’s distance. This object, with its four feet and their shadows would easily produce in my mind the illusion of some mysterious animal. This, however, cannot be the case with the kitten, unless we suppose in it a mental confusion of the inanimate with the animate, that is to say, the animalisation of the inanimate. My opinion is that the surprise, and presently, too, the terror which Riquet manifests, and which keeps him transfixed to the spot, have their origin rather in a certain indeterminate tendency to fear in the presence of all sudden and unusual impressions. Such an apparition would have had no effect whatever on him a few days ago;
