STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 341 



of peculiar shape and color. Black animals, as sheep and cows, 

 seem more particularly to come in for these childish antipathies. 



At first it seems impossible to understand why a child in the 

 fourteenth week should appear to shrink from cats.* This is not, 

 so far as I can gather, a common occurrence at this age, and one 

 would like to cross-examine the mother as to the precise way in 

 which the child had its first introduction to the domestic pet. So 

 far as one can speculate on the matter, one would say that such 

 early shrinking from animals is probably due to their sudden un- 

 expected movements, which may well disconcert the inexperienced 

 infant accustomed to comparatively restful surroundings. 



This seems borne out by another instance, also quoted by 

 Preyer, of a girl who, in the fourth month, as also in the eleventh, 

 was so afraid of pigeons that she could not bring herself to stroke 

 them. The prettiness of pigeons, if not of cats, ought, one sup- 

 poses, to insure the liking of children ; and one has to fall back 

 on the supposition of the first disconcerting strangeness of the 

 moving animal world for the child's mind. 



Later shrinkings from animals show more of the nature of 

 fear. It is sometimes said that children inherit from their ances- 

 tors the fear of certain animals. Thus Darwin, observing that 

 his boy, when taken to the zoological gardens at the age of two 

 years and three months, showed fear of the big caged animals, 

 whose form was unfamiliar to him (lions, tigers, etc.), infers that 

 this fear is transmitted from savage ancestors whose conditions 

 of life compelled them to shun these deadly creatures. But, as M. 

 Compayre' has well shown, f we do not need this hypothesis here. 

 The unfamiliarity of the form, the bigness, together with the 

 awful suggestions of the cage, would be quite enough to beget a 

 vague sense of danger. 



So far as I can ascertain, facts are strongly opposed to the 

 theory of inherited fear of animals. Just as in the first months a 

 child will manifest something like recoil from a pretty and per- 

 fectly innocent pigeon, so later on children manifest fear in the 

 most unlikely directions. In The Invisible Playmate we are told 

 of a girl who got into her first fright on seeing a sparrow drop on 

 the grass near her, though she was not the least afraid of big 

 things, and on first hearing the dog bark in his kennel said, with 

 a little laugh of surprise, " Oh ! coughing." J A parallel case is 

 sent me by a lady friend. One day when her daughter was about 

 four years old she found her standing, the eyes wide open and 

 filled with tears, the arms outstretched for help, evidently trans- 

 fixed with terror, while a small wood louse made its slow way 



* Quoted by Preyer, op. cit., p. 127. The word he uses is "scAewen." 



f Evolution intellectuelle et morale de PEnfant, p. 102. \ See pp. 26, 2*7. 



