8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Preyer gives the sixth and seventh month as the date at which 

 his boy began to cry at the sight of a strange face. In one set of 

 notes sent me it was remarked that a child four months and a 

 half old would cry on being nursed by a stranger. To be nursed 

 by a stranger, however, is to have the whole baby world revolu- 

 tionized : little wonder, then, that it should bring the feeling of 

 strangeness and homelessness (unheimlichkeit). 



Here, too, curious differences soon begin to disclose themselves, 

 some children being decidedly more sociable toward strangers 

 than others. It would be curious to compare the age at which 

 children begin to take kindly to strangers. Preyer gives nineteen 

 months as the date at which his boy surmounted his timidity ; 

 but it is probable that the transition occurs at very different dates 

 in the case of different children. 



I should like to add that the little boy to whom I referred just 

 now displayed the same signs of uneasiness at seeing old friends 

 after an interval, as at returning to old scenes. When eight 

 months old " he moaned in a curious way when his nurse (of 

 whom he was very fond) came home after a fortnight's holiday." 

 Here, however, the signs of fear seem to be less pronounced than 

 in the case of returning to the old room. It would be difficult to 

 give the right name to this curious moan. 



Partial alteration of the surroundings frequently brings about 



a measure of this same mental uneasiness. C 's disturbance at 



the age of twelve weeks at finding his mother in a new dress is 

 paralleled by the apprehensions of Preyer's boy when one year 

 and five months old on seeing his mother in a black dress. The 

 second observation, read in the light of the first, seems to suggest 

 that a change from the customary rather than anything appalling- 

 looking in the black color itself was here the source of the boy's 

 trouble.* This is borne out by another observation sent me. A 

 child manifested between the ages of six or eight months and two 

 years and a half the most marked repugnance to new clothes, so 

 that the authorities found it very difficult to get them on. It is 

 presumable that the donning of new apparel disturbed too rudely 

 the child's sense of his proper self, and begot an uncanny feeling 

 of another put in place of the old familiar child. 



In certain cases the introduction of new natural objects of 

 great extent and impressiveness will produce a similar effect of 

 childish anxiety, as though they made too violent a change in the 

 surroundings. One of the best illustrations of this obtainable 

 from the life of an average well-to-do child is the impression pro- 

 duced by a first visit to the sea. Preyer's boy, at the age of 



* Op. cit., p. 181. Compare the alarming effect of the father's putting on a big hat, 

 p. 117. 



