Page:Scientific Monthly, volume 14.djvu/535

 inherent abilities, of its struggling impulses or even of its efforts, should any be made.

The account of experiments to follow is offered mainly as a sample of this animal's power under certain conditions; they do not admit of the usual methods of control; they can be multiplied indefinitely, but they can not be exactly repeated, since the variables in each case, of which fear is but one, can not be predicted and are bound to influence response.

The mother of the first cat with which we experimented was brought to us in a basket from a town ten miles distant, and never left us until the following year, when she began to raid the birds on our premises and was given away; her offspring, to which I shall now refer, was born and reared on our place and, so far as we knew, it had never left it; at the time of which I speak it certainly had not shown any roaming propensities. The first six weeks of this kitten's life was spent in the barn, where it received little or no attention, and became so wild that it scarce could be handled with impunity. Shortly after this the mother began to bring it into the house; she always entered by a glass-door, which opens to a piazza at the rear, and soon formed the habit of scratching at the glass whenever she wished to be let in or out. The kitten soon acquired the same habit and lost its wild ways completely; in time it became a handsome home-loving house-cat, and we were sorry to part with it, but at the age of fifteen months, when we had to choose between its companionship and that of any nesting birds upon our grounds, its banishment became inevitable.

The first experiment casually made with this cat led me to suspect that it was impossible to turn some Thomases around, and I determined to investigate this point further at the first good opportunity. This cat was taken in a gunny-sack over an irregular course, mainly by electric car, down a series of hills to a point on the University Campus in the city of Cleveland, 4.6 measured miles from its home in Cleveland Heights; there it was given a dish of milk and the liberty of two rooms, in one of which a window had been slightly lowered at the top. This was on the morning of a Monday, and at five o'clock in the afternoon it seemed to be quite at home in its new quarters; on Wednesday morning, about forty hours later, it suddenly appeared on the back porch of our house and gave its usual signal to be admitted. In order to reach its home this cat had traversed an unknown country, consisting of city or suburban streets and allotments, had crossed the gulley of the Belt Line railroad, probably by one of its bridges, and ascended in the path of greatest resistance a series of terraces to a height of four hundred feet. That its home neighborhood could have been