usual, he hesitated a little and after
snuffing at it went back to his couch.

I have made similar experiments with dogs, rabbits, birds, and other
animals. I took long wooden poles, and put them inside their cages or
hutches in such a way that the animals got to know and feel reconciled
to the sight of them. After some days had elapsed, I contrived, while
screened from sight, to take the poles from their usual place and to
make them touch and annoy the animals with more or less violence, thus
causing them to flutter or scamper about and to shrink away, as if from
the touch of a living person, although they were unable, as I have said,
to see me or my hand. Those which were least agitated sprang forward
with little leaps and looked about them, doubtful and excited. I might
go on to describe many other experiments made with the same object, and
always with the same result, but these are enough to show that I went to
work cautiously and conscientiously, that the spontaneous and innate
personification of the objects perceived by animals is clearly
apparent, and also how we may account for their indifference to those to
which they become accustomed.

Among animals the necessity of finding food is the great and unfailing
stimulus towards the exercise of their vital functions; food which may,
as we all know, be vegetable, animal, or a combination of both kinds. It
is evident that in the case of carnivorous animals the object which
satisfies this desire is a living subject, of which it is necessary to
become possessed by arts, wiles, sometimes by a fierce and cruel
conflict. In these cases, animals are in constant communication with an
animal world resembling their own, and the objective reality is for the
most part resolved into living subjects, endowed with consciousness and
will. But neither is the vegetable food of herbivorous, frugivorous, and
graminivorous animals regarded by them, as it is by us, as a material
and unconscious satisfaction of their wants; these grasses, grains, and
leaves appear to animals to be living powers which it is necessary to
conquer, animated subjects endowed with life, but for the most part
inoffensive, and which, unlike the living prey of carnivora, offer no
resistance.

Observe the way in which an herbivorous or graminivorous animal becomes
excited and angry when the branch or the ear of corn obstinately adheres
to the ground, or offers any other difficulty to his immediate desire of
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