46 THE PRINCIPLE OF Chap. I. 



depresses his ears, so as to protect them from being 

 bitten, as if he were fighting with another horse. 



A horse when eager to start on a journey makes the 

 nearest approach which he can to the habitual move- 

 ment of progression by pawing the ground. Now when 

 horses in their stalls are about to be fed and are eager 

 for their corn, they paw the pavement or the straw. 

 Two of my horses thus behave when they see or hear 

 the corn given to their neighbours. But here we have 

 what may almost be called a true expression, as pawing 

 the ground is universally recognized as a sign of eager- 

 ness. 



Cats cover up their excrements of both kinds with 

 earth; and my grandfather 17 saw a kitten scraping 

 ashes over a spoonful of pure water spilt on the hearth; 

 so that here an habitual or instinctive action was falsely 

 excited, not by a previous act or by odour, but by eye- 

 sight. It is well known that cats dislike wetting their 

 feet, owing, it is probable, to their having aboriginally in- 

 habited the dry country of Egypt; and when they wet 

 their feet they shake them violently. My daughter 

 poured some water into a glass close to the head of a 

 kitten; and it immediately shook its feet in the usual 

 manner; so that here we have an habitual movement 

 falsely excited by an associated sound instead of by the 

 sense of touch. 



Kittens, puppies, young pigs and probably many 

 other young animals, alternately push with their fore- 

 feet against the mammary glands of their mothers, to 

 excite a freer secretion of milk, or to make it flow. Now 

 it is very common with young cats, and not at all rare 

 with old cats of the common and Persian breeds (be- 



16 Dr. Darwin, * Zoonomia,' 1794, vol. i. p. 160. I find that 

 the fact of cats protruding their feet when pleased is also 

 noticed (p. 151) in this work. 



