The Play of Animals
Chapter 3: The Play of Animals
Karl Groos
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THE following treatise forms, so far as I know, the first attempt at a systematic treatment of the play of animals, and, in view of the unavoidable difficulties inherent in the task, I wish to bespeak the reader's indulgence at the outset. Modern works on the mental life of animals, such as the writings of Carus, Schneider, Wundt, Büchner, Espinas, Romanes, Lloyd Morgan, Flourens, Alix, and Foveau de Courmelles, contain only meagre and general accounts of even the most important plays.[1]
Thus Romanes, in his laborious work, Animal Intelligence, which in the edition of 1892 numbers five hundred pages, makes, aside from the play of ants and dolphins, only a few incidental observations on the play of birds, dogs, and monkeys.[2]
The great significance of play in physical and mental development seems not to have attracted the attention of psychologists as it deserves to do. Therefore I hope that this book, in spite of its imperfections, may contribute to the result that in the future every ani-
(83) -mal psychology shall contain a chapter devoted to play.[3]
On account of this defect in the specific works on animal psychology I have been obliged to seek for most of my material from other sources, and especially from such books as contain descriptions of the habits of animals, though without aiming to meet the requirements of psychology. Most of the observations described are from Naumann, Bechstein, Rengger, Lenz, Ch. L. and A. E. Brehm, K. and E. Müller, Tschudi, Russ, Diezel, Marshall, Darwin, Miss Romanes, Wallace, and Hudson. A. E. Brehm's Thierleben is the richest of these. It is marred by the attempt to humanize the actions of animals, but this defect is not injurious to his descriptions of plays. The examples without references in this and the next chapter are from it. I have also made use of such periodicals as Gartenlaube and Der Zoologischen Garten. I have examined many books of travel, but usually with discouraging results. If they refer to the play of animals at all, the most they say is that is was " amusing," or " astonishing," or " droll," or " exceedingly funny," without any account of how or why. Such a description as that of the young gorilla and some other animals in the " Loango Expedition " forms a notable exception. As far as personal observation goes, I am familiar with the habits of dogs, as I have always from my youth had various breeds of them about me; and also I have collected enough material in my frequent visits to the zoologieal gardens to furnish cases of some kinds of play front my own observation. A complete review of all animal plays is not
(84) possible here; indeed, I have confined myself in essentials to phenomena from the life of the higher orders, because the play of the lower ones seems to me to be too litle known. I have multiplied examples in those departments where errors of judgment are most liable to occur, and can only be set right by such fulness of detail. I am afraid that this result has not always been accomplished, however, and in the case of the so-called love-plays the material was so copious as to compel me to suppress much that was interesting.
There is no difficulty in classifying our subject if the conception developed in the preceding chapters is accepted. I hope that no essential group has been left out of the following table:
1. Experimentation.
2. Movement plays.
3. Hunting plays:
a. With real living prey.
b. With living mock prey.
c. With lifeless mock prey.
4. Fighting plays:
a. Teasing.
b. Tussling among young animals.
c. Playful fighting among grown animals.
5. Love plays:
a. Among young animals.
b. Rhythmical movements.
c. The display of beautiful and unusual colours and forms.
d. The production of calls and notes.
e. The coquetry of the female.
6. Constructive arts.
7. Nursing plays.
(85)
8. Imitative plays.
9. Curiosity.
This arrangement will be followed in order throughout, except that I have treated love plays, which deserve more than superficial elaboration, in a separate chapter, after all the others.
1. Experimentation.
In opening this subject we are at once confronted by a group of phenomena, familiar enough in children, but hardly noticed heretofore in the psychology of animals. The term experimentation is here used to denote such movements of young animals as enable them first to win the mastery over their own organs, and then over external objects. It includes stretching and straining the limbs; tasting, seizing, and clawing; gnawing and scratching; exercising the voice and making other sounds; rending, pulling, tearing, tugging, kicking, lifting, and, dropping objects, etc. Such experimental movements are of fundamental importance for all the life tasks of animals, for on them depends the proper control of the body, muscular co-ordination, etc.; and, psychically, they promote the development of the perceptive faculties, such as space perception, attention, will power, memory, etc. They form the common foundation on which the specialized plays are built up. Though the term hardly seems quite applicable to all the examples included under this heading, I use it in default of a better. It seems to have originated, so far as I can trace its use, with Jean Paul, who speaks in his Levana of " the child's experimental physics, optics, and mechanics" He says, "Children take the greatest pleasure in turning things around, in lifting them, sticking keys in locks or anything of the sort, even in
(86) opening and shutting doors."[4] Later, B. Sigismund made use of the expression in his serviceable little book[5] and Preyer and Sikorski have established its use in modern psychology.
Since the babyhood of animals is so much shorter than that of the human infant, it offers much less material for psychological investigation, and, besides, there is no Preyer for the animals.[6] Still, we are not entirely without material.
"With the stretching of his limbs," say the Müllers, " the young dog begins the first stage of his baby play."[7] Puppies also begin very early to gnaw any wooden object, as well as their own extremities, with their little teeth, sharp as needles. Even the play with their tails is at first purely experimental. Afterward the chase instinct comes in, when the end seems to vanish so mysteriously as they whirl. A dog that I once owned was so small and weak that he always tumbled over in attempting to bark. It was most ludicrous to witness this ignominious ending to his hostile demonstrations. A kitten, too, will play with its tail, and exercise the claw-armed paws in seizing and holding. [8] Scheitlin observed a young panther playing with its own tail,[9] and Brehm relates how pumas at the age of
(87) from five to six weeks play with their mother's tail, as do all the cat tribe. He also tells of a young fish-otter that snapped at its tail and fore paws. This, however, appears to belong rather to the chase phenomena, as it is not purely experimental. But there are no clearly defined boundaries between general experimentation and specialized plays. The cat observed by Wesley Mills touched the poker (on its fifty-ninth day), which was hot. It hissed, but soon after it touched it again " in its usual persistent way." It was fond of knocking down spools from the table, and especially delighted in taking pins out of the cushion.
A young polar bear that I knew often lay on its back and bit its paws, or tried to tear a piece of paper, and it has frequently been noticed that young bears make a humming kind of sound, ending with a smack, when they suck their paws.[10] Falkenstein relates of his gorilla, about a year and a quarter old: "He delighted in the bath, and after a while tried to help himself when I did not appear at his side at the right moment with sponge and soap. That the water all ran out of the tub in a few moments did not affect his enthusiasm. He paddled on all fours in the wet, like the little darkies during a shower." [11]
Little nestlings make fluttering efforts before they can fly, and young sparrows chirp so lustily in the nest as to suggest genuine voice practice. " Immediately on being hatched," says Hermann Miller, " the young birds begin to lift up their voices. Of canaries, goldfinches. siskins, and bullfinches hatched in confinement, canaries peeped earliest and loudest, bullfinches latest
(88) and weakest, suggesting that the birds' later capacity for singing might be gauged by their first twittering. These loud, piercing notes are by no means signs of hunger, but, on the contrary, indicate the greatest contentment, for they cease at once when the mother leaves them and cool air fills the nest."
I must insert here a remark that belongs to the idealization of play. We may safely assume that the satisfaction of instinctive impulse is not the only pleasure in experimentation. Even in the animal intelligence it denotes a finer psychical state. Preyer calls the satisfaction it affords, pleasure in the possession of power, in "being a cause"—such, for example, as the child feels when he tears a paper into fragments.[12]
Lessing expressed it abstractly when he said that we become more intensely conscious of our reality by means of such strong excitations,[13] and animals may have the same feeling as an accompaniment of instinctive activity, and especially of playful experimentation. It may be lacking in the very earliest infancy, but the little polar bear that delightedly tore the paper bag to bits certainly felt the pleasure of " being a cause ""in working his own sweet will," as Schiller has it in his Künstlern. This principle is even more applicable to the examples which follow, relating as they do to more mature animals. Before going on, however, I wish to call attention to the absurd form this pleasure in being a cause sometimes takes even in rational beings. How many of us want to scribble or whittle or do something with our hands all the time, to break a twig and chew it while we walk, to strike the snow off walls as we pass,
(89) to kick a pebble before us, to step on all the acorns on the pavement, to drum on the window pane, to hit the wine glasses together, to roll up little balls of bread, etc. Perhaps to this category, too, belongs that inexplicable piece of folly, of which we are all guilty, that when, for instance, a perfectly trustworthy person reads aloud a telegram " Can not come—Henry," we are never satisfied till we read it ourselves.
The case of animals is much like our own. The impulse to experiment continues into advanced age, and constantly tends to rise above its instinctive origin to freer, more individual activity, so that the fully developed animal probably also feels something of the pleasure in exercising power, in being a cause.
Beckmann says, in speaking of the raccoon: " The caged creature devised a thousand ways to relieve the tedium of his many idle hours. Now he would sit up in a corner and, with a most serious expression, busy himself with binding a piece of straw across his nose; now he played absorbedly with the toes of his hind feet, or made dashes for the end of his waving tail. Then, having packed a quantity of hay in his pouch, he lay on his back and tried to keep the mass in place by holding his tail tightly across it with his fore feet. Whenever he could get at masonry he gnawed the mortar and did incredible damage in a short time. Then he sits down, like Jeremiah before the ruins of Jerusalem, in the midst of his heap of rubbish, looks darkly about, and, exhausted with so much work, loosens his collar with his fore paws. After a long fit of sulks he can be restored to good humor at once by the sight of a full water bucket, and he will make any effort to get near it. Then he proceeds to test the depth of the
(90) water carefully, for when he is playing at washing things he wants to dip only his paws in the water, not at all liking to stand in it up to his neck. After satisfying himself on this point, he steps with evident delight into the wet element and feels about on the bottom for something to wash. An old pot handle, a bit of porcelain, a snail shell, are favourite objects for his purpose and are used over and over again. Now he spies an old bottle in the distance which appears to be greatly in need of washing. He reaches for it, but his chain is too short, so without hesitation he lies down as a monkey would do, gaining in that way the length of his body, and rolls the bottle toward him with his outstretched hind foot. The next moment we see him up on his hind legs, slowly waddling back to the water, the big bottle clasped in his fore paws and strained against his breast. If he is disturbed in his attempt he behaves like a self-willed, spoiled child, throwing himself on his back and clinging with all fours so tightly to his beloved bottle that he can be lifted by it. When he at last becomes tired of his work in the water, he fishes his plaything out, sits cross-legged and rocks to and fro, constantly fingering and boring into the narrow neck of the bottle."
This so-called washing seems to be characteristic of various kinds of bears as well. I myself have observed one instance, in the case of a polar bear that rolled an iron pot to and fro in his bath tub, taking it at last to a little trough of running water and there washing the indestructible vessel in earnest. It was very funny to see the bear seize it firmly with his fore paws and go through the motions of a washwoman scrubbing on a board. When the bath was freshly cemented in this bear house the animals were kept out of it for a day after the work
(91) was finished, for it was well known that they would soon spoil undried cement with their claws.
The following relates to dogs that have well passed their infancy. It may be called experimentation when a dog presses or rather scratches a beetle to death with his paw, as they are given to doing with a strange mixture of curiosity and aversion. A St. Bernard, three and a half years old, that I formerly owned, spent many hours every day gnawing to bits any pieces of wood he could get hold of, usually from our wood pile unfortunately.
Alix tells of an Arabian dog that frequently amused itself playing with its own shadow on the wall. " Now straightening up his long ears, now turning them to right or left, now throwing them back, he produced in this way strange figures which appeared to amuse him greatly."[14]
A trustworthy person once told me of a dog that had played so much with the damper of a stove that he understood perfectly well how to turn it on. That he ever did so with the intention of raising the temperature seems to me a hazardous statement.
Some of the examples so far given relate to the destructive impulse, which is, however, only an extended kind of experimentation. Thus Scheitlin relates of an elephant: [15] " How amusingly that elephant in Cassel acted when his attendant forgot him in his stable! He went into the house, collected all the movables — tables, chairs, stools, pictures, and even the bed from the chamber — in a pile in the sitting-room, wet them all over, and walked out in the field as if he had not been at any mischief."
(92) The destructiveness of monkeys is proverbial. They gnaw boards as dogs do—at least I have seen it done by the baboon and chimpanzee, their eating trough being badly disfigured in that way. Long-tailed monkeys amuse themselves by breaking off tough branches as they clamber from limb to limb.[16]
The book of daily observations, for which we are indebted to Romanes's sister, is full of examples of experimentation. It relates to a specimen of Cebus fatuellus which Romanes gave to his sister in December, 1880. The following description is from her diary:
" I notice that the love of mischief is very strong in him. To-day he got hold of a wineglass and an egg-cup. The glass he dashed on the floor with all his might, and of course broke it. Finding, however, that the egg-cup would not break for being thrown down, he looked round for some hard substance against which to dash it. The post of the brass bedstead appearing to be suitable for the purpose, he raised the egg-cup high above his head and gave it several hard blows. When it was completely smashed he was quite satisfied. He breaks a stick by passing it down between a heavy object and the wall, and then hanging on to the end, thus breaking it across the heavy object. He frequently destroys an article of dress by carefully pulling out the threads (thus unripping it) before he begins to tear it with his teeth in a violent manner.
" In accordance with his desire for mischief, he is, of course, very fond of upsetting things, but he always takes great care that they do not fall on himself. Thus he will pull a chair toward him till it is almost overbalanced, then he intently fixes his eyes on the top
(93) bar of the back, and when he sees it coming over his way, darts from underneath and watches the fall with great delight; and similarly with heavier things. There is a washstand, for example, with a heavy marble top, which he has with great labour upset several times, but always without hurting himself." [17]
Vosmaern had a tame female orang-outang that could untie the most intricate knots with fingers or teeth, and took such pleasure in doing it that she regularly untied the shoes of those who came near her. Still more remarkable is the dexterity of Miss Romanes's monkey. Her entry for January 14, 1881, runs thus: " To-day he obtained possession of a hearth-brush, one of the kind which has the handle screwed into the brush. He soon found the way to unscrew the handle, and having done that he immediately began to try to find out the way to screw it in again. This he in time accomplished. At first he put the wrong end of the handle into the hole, but turned it round and round the right way of screwing. Finding it did not hold, he turned the other end of the handle and carefully stuck it into the hole, and began to turn it the right way. It was, of course, a very difficult feat for him to perform, for he required both his hands to hold the handle in the proper position and to turn it between his hands in order to screw it in, and the long bristles of the brush prevented it from remaining steady or with the right side up. He held the brush with his hind hand, but even so it was very difficult for him to get the first turn of the screw to fit into the thread; he worked at it, however, with the most unwearying perseverance until he got the first turn of the screw
(94) to catch, and he then quickly turned it round and round until it was screwed up to the end. The most remarkable thing was that, however often he was disappointed in the beginning, he never was induced to try turning the handle the wrong way; he always screwed it from right $o left. As soon as he had accomplished his wish he unscrewed it again, and then screwed it in again, the second time rather more easily than the first, and so on many times. When he had become by practice tolerably perfect in screwing and unscrewing, he gave it up and took to some other amusement. One remarkable thing is that he should take so much trouble to do that which is of no material benefit to him . . . . It is not the desire of praise, as he never notices people looking on; it is simply the desire to achieve an object for the sake of achieving an object, and he never rests nor allows his attention to be distracted until it is done."[18] The report for February 10, 1881, runs: " We gave him a bundle of sticks this morning, and he amused himself all day by poking them in the fire and pulling them out again to smell the smoking end. He likewise pulls hot cinders from the grate and passes them over his head and chest, evidently enjoying the warmth, but never burning himself. He also puts hot ashes on his head. I gave him some paper, and, as he can not from the length of his chain quite reach the fire, he rolled the paper up into the form of a stick and then put it into the fire, pulling it out as soon as it caught light, and watching the blaze in the fender with great satisfaction. I gave him a whole newspaper, and he tore it in pieces, rolled up each piece, as I have described, to make it long
(95) enough to reach the fire, and so burned it all piece by piece."[19]
We here see the playful experimentation, which at first only serves the purpose of gaining control of the bodily organs, become further and further developed. No doubt, according to Darwin's theory of evolution, primitive man acquired the ability to use fire by just such experimentation.
The destructive impulse is manifested even more strongly by parrots and some other birds than by monkeys. Their winter quarters are often patched and mended like little Roland's cloak in Uhland's story, and the stronger the repairs the more eagerly do the parrots attack them. Linden tells of the persistence with which his cockatoos turned over the feeding trough in their cage. " I have used every device to make the troughs fast, winding fine wire about them and to the iron bars, screwing them tightly from the outside, etc., but my cockatoos know very well how to unscrew, and get them loose sooner or later." " The desire to do mischief is characteristic of the cockatoo," says Brehm, " and the performances of these birds pass belief. They gnaw through planks five or six centimetres thick, as I can testify from my own experience, and even iron plates a millimetre thick; they smash glass, and try to penetrate masonry." Rey relates of Carolina parrots: " Their favourite mischief was throwing their water-cups out of the cage after they had satisfied their thirst. Their delight was evident if the cups broke." And Dickens say°, with delightful exaggeration, of a raven that died young: " It may have been that he was too bright a genius to live long, or it may
(96) have been that he took some pernicious substance into his bill, and thence into his maw, which is not improbable, seeing that he new-pointed the greater part of the garden wall by digging out the mortar, broke countless squares of glass by scraping away the putty all round the frames, and tore up and swallowed, in splinters, the greater part of a wooden staircase of six steps and a landing." [20] Brehm's brother had a tame vulture that often played with his master's fingers, taking them in his beak without hurting them. Another bird of the same kind, observed by Girtanner, tore the strong padding of his cage in every direction, took the straw out and played with it. He also clung to Girtanner's watch chain and clothing, " pulled straw from my hand, chuckling with delight. He took pleasure in tearing or biting straw ropes, and came to me at once when he saw that I was getting ready to make one." Still another stroked his master (Baldenstein) with his beak, or stuck it up his sleeve and uttered his contented " Gich."
Animals often amuse themselves by making noises. According to Scheitlin, hares can readily be trained to drum, because the motion is natural to them. " They drum with unexampled rapidity, quicker than any drummer boy, and even with a sort of passion."[21] This enjoyment of noise forms part of their pleasure in breaking and tearing. Experiments with apes especially illustrate this. Savage thinks that chimpanzees collect on purpose to play, on those occasions when they beat with rods on sounding pieces of wood.[22] This remark, in which I at first had little faith, has been fully
(97) confirmed by the report of the Loango Expedition. Falkenstein tells there of a young gorilla: " A peculiar, almost childish, pleasure was awakened in him by striking on hollow, sounding bodies. He seldom missed the opportunity, in passing casks, dishes, or griddles, of drumming on them. On our homeward voyage he indulged freely in this pastime, being allowed to move about on the steamer."[23]
The same gorilla, too, frequently beat on his own breast with both fists, " apparently from overflowing contentment and sheer pleasure," a habit which in the adult usually indicates strong emotion, especially anger.
Voice practice is very common. I have already spoken of a puppy's attempts to bark, and I am inclined to think that even the howling of a young dog may be a kind of play; and I believe the same is true of young lions, that from time to time rise up and give forth frightful roars that commonly excite the others. The purring of cats, too, is like play. Then there are the deafening cries of the howling ape, considered by many as only an amusement. The wonder is that the animals have attained such a structure of the larynx as to be able to produce them. One kind of ape produces a flutelike note resembling the whistle of a bird, for which the lips are contracted. " Usually it is when he is unemployed, and seems to express his ennui by means of the sound." [24]
In many cases the vocal exercise consists in learning by heart a simple or complicated decoy cry that is usually connected with courtship. to which I will devote the next chapter. A single other example of voice practice will suffice, as it is a very valuable one. Hud-
(98) -son relates of the crested screamer, or chakar (Chauna chavarria), that has a very loud voice: " There is something strangely impressive in these spontaneous outbursts of a melody so powerful from one of these large flocks, and, though accustomed to hear these birds from childhood, I have often been astonished at some new effect produced by a large multitude singing under certain conditions. Travelling alone one summer day, 'I came at noon to a lake on the pampas called Kakel, a sheet of water narrow enough for one to see across. Chakars in countless numbers were gathered along its shores, but they were all arranged in well-defined flocks, averaging about five hundred birds in each flock. These flocks seemed to extend all round the lake, and had probably been driven by the drought from all the plains around to this spot. Presently one flock near me began singing, and continued their powerful chant for three or four minutes; when they ceased, the neat flock took up the strains, and after it the next, and so on until the notes of the flocks of the opposite shore came floating strong and clear across the water—then passed away, growing fainter and fainter, until once more the sound approached me, travelling round to my side again. The effect was very curious, and I was astonished at the orderly way with which each flock waited its turn to sing, instead of a general outburst taking place after the first flock had given the signal. On another occasion I was still more impressed, for here the largest number of birds I have ever found congregated at one plaee sang all together. This was on the southern pampas, at a place called Gualicho, where I had ridden for an hour before sunset over a marshy plain where there was still much standing water in the rushy pools, though it was at the height of the dry
(99) season. This whole plain was covered with an endless flock of chakars, not in close order, but scattered about in pairs and small groups. In this desolate place I found a gaucho and his family, and I spent the night with them . . . . About nine o'clock we were eating supper in the rancho, when suddenly the entire multitude of birds covering the marsh for miles around burst forth into a tremendous evening song. It is impossible to describe the effect of this mighty rush of sound . . . . One peculiarity was that in this mighty noise, which sounded louder than the sea thundering on a rocky coast, I seemed to be able to distinguish hundreds, even thousands, of individual voices.
" Forgetting my supper, I sat motionless and overcome with astonishment, while the air and even the frail rancho seemed to be trembling in that tempest of sound.
" When it ceased, my host remarked, with a smile, ` We are accustomed to this, senor — every evening we have this concert.' It was a concert worth riding a hundred miles to hear."[25]
Much might be said of the twittering of sparrows, the quacking of ducks and geese, the flapping of storks, etc.; but, as has been remarked, it is difficult to determine how far such phenomena, especially the complicated ones, are connected with courtship. I reserve for the next chapter a closer examination of them. However, it may be noted here that in merely experimental noises and voice practice there is a suggestion of art which is not connected with courtship.
2. Movement Plays.
By this term I designate plays that involve change of place for its own sake. Hunting and fighting, in-
(100) -deed, also produce change of place to a considerable extent, but with them the movement has a specific aim. Here I refer only to such plays as are concerned with practice in locomotion as such, where the walking, running, leaping, climbing, flying, swimming of the animal finds its object in itself. As I said before, I pass by the lower orders, though some of their actions, especially the swarming of insects, is very suggestive of play. " With what joy in life insects swarm in the sunshine! " says Schiller; and Hudson is quite of the same opinion when he says: " I have spoken of the firefly's `pastime' advisedly, for I have really never been able to detect it doing anything in the evening beyond flitting aimlessly about, like house flies in a room, hovering and revolving in company by the hour, apparently for amusement."[26] It may well be that animals quite low in the scale of being play, but who can prove it ? " Ludunt in. aquis pisces," says Julius Caesar Bulengerus. Is it true that the fish tumble about so happily in their element? Is not this supposition rather the product of aesthetic sympathy—of the poetic delight that we ourselves experience on beholding the light, graceful movements of these delicate creatures? " In very large aquariums or in its native waters the stickleback swims along rapidly and gracefully, often leaping high out of the water, indulging in many gambols, but careful in it all to keep watch of what goes be ore itnamely, .the young fry that forms its principle diet " (Brehm). How are we to know in such a case that all the movements do net serve the. serious business of getting food? According to Noll, male and female carp chase one another playfully and delight in sportive leaping.
(101) But who can say that sexual instinct is not responsible for this? And the same may be said of the art of the flying fish. Brehm says of them: " On board ship, swarms of such fish can be seen at varying distances; they suddenly rise from the waves with a peculiar whirring and shoot rapidly over the water, sometimes rising to a height of four or five metres from the surface and travelling a hundred to a hundred and twenty metres before vanishing again in the waves. Not seldom this spectacle is quickly repeated, for as soon as one company rises, flies forward and falls, another begins to advance in the same way, and before it sinks a third and fourth are on the way. If these advances were made in a continuous direction we might suppose that their flight over the waves was to escape some danger. But they appear now here, now there, and keep to no particular direction, but fly across and contrary to one another. We can only suppose, therefore, that it is all a play, perhaps from pure exuberance of spirits, just as other fish swim rapidly over the water." Humboldt expresses the same view of flying fish.. The sceptic may, of course, question whether all the motions described may not be attributed to flight or the search for food. Yet such an animal psychologist as Romanes speaks with great assurance of the play of fishes.[27] He says: " Nothing can well be more expressive of sportive glee than many of their movements."[28]
I am by no means so fully convinced as Romanes, but still I consider it highly probable that movement playa aril manifested by fish. Their comparatively weak mental endowment is not a difficulty to me, since I re-
(102) -gard play as at first an instinct, producing activity without serious motive. There can be no question that they often seem to play as they tumble about, and Romanes himself can offer no more convincing proof than that. The intelligence of fish is not, however, so inferior as is commonly supposed, and the probability that they have movement plays becomes apparent from the following observation of Beneke. He studied the habits of Macropods thoroughly, and made a report on them in Brehm's Thierleben, including a detailed account of the courtship of these fish: " The male usually, though not invariably, keeps to one particular female. On approaching her he extends his tail and fins, and grows perceptibly darker, while the female either remains perpendicular, all her fins closely compressed, and circles slowly round, or swims as the male does, though in the opposite direction. Then they turn slowly in circles together, the tail of one in front of the other's head, both with stiffly distended fins. If they become greatly excited during the play, the male trembles while he spreads himself, very much as a cock does when he struts around the hens, and the female often imitates this." When his male fish died Beneke secured another pair, and he says that the two females played together in the same way. The playful character of this can hardly be questioned, and, having admitted one case, we can not deny that much of the tumbling about in the water may really be playful. Of birds, however, we can speak with greater certainty. There are, it is true, many phenomena which have the appearance of play, but really belong to the search for food. Nothing, for instance, seems freer, lighter, or more aimless than the flight of swallows in spring, and yet we know that the impulse to satisfy their hunger, and not sportiveness,
(103) is the reason for it. The same is true, as a rule, of the cheerful hopping of birds from bough to bough and to the ground. Courtship, too, is at the bottom of much of the playful motion, as well as of voice practice. Referring this class to the next chapter, I here confine myself to a series of examples, most of which can be attributed with certainty to purely play impulse, and the remainder with great probability. First we notice the learning to fly, swim, or walk by young birds.
Birds can no more fly of themselves than babies can walk. The infant's kicking corresponds to the fluttering of little birds in the nest and his first step to its first attempt at flight. The tiny creature is very timid, and hardly dares to trust itself in the air. According to Hermann Miller's observation, a canary bird makes its first attempt to climb up on the nest rim on about the sixteenth day. Weinland gives a detailed account of a canary family: " Sixteenth day, 8 n. m.: The young dare not climb out of the nest, but reach and stretch a great deal. 10 A. m.: Amid great tumult one fluttered onto the rim of the nest and perched there, breathing hard and fast, appearing to be frightened at his own daring. In a minute the forward youngster is back in the nest. Seventeenth day, 7 A. M.: The feet as yet serve only as wide supports, like those of the ostrich, and not for dexterously clinging to boughs, as will be their later function. Twelve o'clock: Little Blackhead, the stronger one, has hopped out on the perch near the nest and down on the floor of the cage, anti from there through the door of another cage, then quickly back. The little feet are still very unsteady, especially on the perch. On the ground he sometimes steadies himself with his tail, a use which is not made of it in later life. Eighteenth day: Both little ones have hopped about in the cage
(104) several times for some minutes and then back into the nest. Blackhead is always the leader. Twentieth day: Blackhead flew out of the cage; he found no place to light, fluttering high in the air all the time. He made the rounds of the ceiling several times, and at last, tired out, he fluttered down the wall to the floor. Twenty-first day: The yellow one also flies out in the room now. They can not find the way back yet. Twenty-third day: Blackhead took a bath. He plunged into the large shallow basin, made some awkward fluttering motions, and hurried out on the other side. Twenty-fourth day: Both birds fly, eat, bathe, and make their toilet alone."[29]
Dr. Krauss writes of the flying lessons of young storks: " As soon as the young can stand firmly and get to the edge of the nest, preparations for flight begin. Flapping their wings, they move round the nest, at first without rising above it. Then with a kind of hop they go a little higher, always hovering over the nest and keeping up this climbing process until they are at least a yard or two above it; they are able to continue the hovering a half minute or longer, after which they anxiously cling to the horizontal projection of the nest. Only when this has been repeated several times do they break the magic circle, gliding boldly out into the open air, describing in their flight a circle fifty or sixty metres in diameter, above the nest. They repeat this once, and then either fly back to the nest or rest on some neighbouring roof. At the end of July or the beginning of August begins the practice in high flying, preparatory to the great migration." [30]
The parents of sparrows, shy of flight, urge them on
(105) by holding food before them and flying on with the dainty morsel, uttering encouraging calls.[31]
" In the spring of 1872," writes Liebe to Brehm, " I noticed a pair of falcons circling over a wood. They were the terror of cranes living in that region. I happened to be passing there daily, and saw that for eight days one of the falcons came every evening to the wood and perched in a tree for about a quarter of an hour. After that he flew searchingly around the valley from time to time. I thought that the female must have been shot, but this suspicion was not confirmed. After some days she came again to the wood with the male at the usual hour, between 6 and 7 P. at., accompanied also by two young ones, which were still so helpless as hardly to be able to keep their equilibrium when perching in the trees. Soon both the old birds were skimming through the air, flying against the wind in their play. A beautiful performance, which I had once seen in Norway, and once by the male of this same pair. The male soon settled-down, but the female kept up her wonderful evolutions, constantly drawing nearer to the young ones, till at last she shoved one of them, with a side push, from the bough, whether with her wings or breast my glass was not strong enough for me to see. The little one must fly whether willing or no, and after clumsily trying to imitate the movements of the old bird, it soon lit again. Thereupon the mother pushed the other one off its high perch and compelled it to fly like the first. Shortly they made both the young ones, practice together, drove them aloft slantingly against the wind, shot perpendicularly down and then up again in splendid curves, and displayed all the skill that be
(106) longs to their kind. The little ones, trying to do the same things, awkwardly imitated their movements." Such actions are not rare in the animal world, where play and instruction are united, though in this case, with Brehm, too much is made of the analogy to human conduct.[32]
I class the learning to swim of aquatic birds among play movements. Here, too, the parents assist instinct, and so hasten their preparation for life's tasks. Old swimming birds take their young on their backs and then slide them off into the water—a very simple method, by which many a boy has been taught to swim. Julius Tapé gives a very beautiful description. He lived for a long time on the Danube, and " often noticed that young geese were afraid of the water before they learned to swim, and only gradually became accustomed to it by being, as it were, outwitted by the old ones. As soon as the little ones are old enough to go on the water their parents take them to the bank. The gander goes before, keeping up a continual gabble, and the mother, also gabbling, urges them on from behind. After a very short trial of swimming the young ones are quickly brought back to land, and this trial is repeated and lengthened from day to day until they go into the water alone."'[33] That swimming is not entirely an acquired art, however, but instinctive in part, is proved by the case of ducks hatched by a hen. How Büchner can find an argument against instinct in the fact that these little ducks need a longer time to become accustomed to the water I can not see. Hermann Müller
(107) says of young birds learning to walk: " The first movements seem to be not on the toes, but on the heels. If they are hurried, the birds tip forward, steadying themselves with their wings." Büchner describes the walking of little chickens, from Stiebeling's observations: " The chicken begins, probably about two hours after it breaks the shell, to make feeble attempts at walking, in which the wings serve as crutches. He rises and sinks again, falls down and gets up again, so that the whole process is more a slide than a walk. It learns to walk in from five to eight hours if its mother helps it, but from eight to sixteen hours are needed if the chicks are separated from the hen as soon as hatched."[34]
Such movements can of course be considered as play only so long as they are simply exercise. As soon as the bird is far enough on to turn his flying to account in the search for food, play changes to serious activity. This transition takes place very quickly in birds, but their short time for practice is just as really a playtime as is the longer period of beasts of prey.
Some phenomena belonging to migration ought perhaps to be mentioned in this connection. That this impulse is instinctive is witnessed to by the classic ornithologist Naumann, in a passage already quoted. " The impulse to seek a warmer climate," he says, " is hereditary in these birds. Young birds taken from the nest and placed in a large room. where they are allowed to fly about freely, prove this conclusively. They are restless at night during the season for their migration, just
(108) as old birds of their kind are."[35] Before the time for their departure migratory birds are fond of collecting in large flocks, and this can only be regarded as play, especially in the case of the young, preparatory for the long flight. Thus, in the spring, young nightingales take little experimental trips from shrub to shrub and field to field. It is the same with the young of the whitethroat, bower bird, song thrush, and many other kinds of birds.[36] Though it is doubtful, as I have said, whether the so-called flying games of adult birds are movement plays, I will include a couple of such examples. Scheitlin tells of a young crane: " He went to the field with his master, rose in the air of his own accord and with evident pleasure, tumbled about some, and then came down and walked by his master's side." Hudson relates of the wonderful crested screamer: " I was once very much surprised at the behaviour of a couple of chakars during a thunderstorm. On a sultry day in summer I was standing watching masses of black cloud coming rapidly over the sky, while a hundred yards from me stood the two birds, also apparently watching the approaching storm with interest. Presently the edge of the cloud touched the sun and a twilight gloom fell on the earth. The very moment the sun disappeared, the birds rose up and soon began singing their long-sounding notes, though it was loudly thundering at the time, while vivid flashes of lightning lit the black cloud overhead at short intervals. I watched their flight and listened to their notes, till suddenly, as they made ä wide sweep upward, they disappeared in
(109) the cloud, and at the same moment. their voices became muffled, and seemed to come from an immense distance. The cloud continued emitting sharp flashes of lightning, but the birds never reappeared, and after six or seven minutes once more their notes sounded clear and loud above the muttering thunder. I suppose they had passed through the cloud into the clear atmosphere above it, but I was extremely surprised at their fearlessness." The beautiful floating motions of birds of prey are principally for reconnoitring, and are also connected with courtship, but it may well be supposed that the birds sometimes exercise their skill from pure pleasure in the movement. Darwin tells us that the condor gives a splendid exhibition, floating for half an hour without a movement of the wings, describing great circles, rising and falling in beautiful curves.
What has been said with regard to the art of flying applies also to the dancing of many birds, except that I consider the connection with sexual instinct closer in the latter case, where many of the movements are highly specialized. Hudson, on the contrary, regards the dances of birds as purely playful, originating in cheerful spirits. Although I do not agree with him, I must admit that the sexual explanation is impossible in the case of one of his examples. He is speaking of the spur-winged lapwing, that resembles the European lapwing, but is a third larger, more highly coloured, and furnished with spurs on its wings. Three individuals are required to perform their dance, which, according to Hudson, is unique in this respect. The birds are so fond of it that they indulge in it all the year round and at frequent intervals during the day, also on moonlight nights. If a person watches any two birds for some time—for they live in pairs—he will see another
(110) lapwing, one of a neighbouring couple, rise up and fly to them, . . . and is welcomed with notes and signs of pleasure. Advancing to the visitor, they place themselves behind it; then all three, keeping step, begin a rapid march, uttering resonant drumming notes in time with their movements . . . . The march ceases; the leader elevates his wings and stands motionless and erect, still uttering loud notes; while the other two, with puffed-out plumage and standing exactly abreast, stoop forward and downward until the tips of their beaks touch the ground, and, sinking their rhythmical voices to a murmur, remain for some time in this posture. The performance is then over, and the visitor goes back to his own ground and mate to receive a visitor himself later on."[37] If this description is entirely accurate, the foregoing will probably long remain one of the unsolved riddles of animal life.
Finally, the swinging that gives such pleasure to many birds must be included in the list of movement plays. Every one knows how captive parrots and canaries love to swing on a ring, and it appears from the observation of Naumann that birds often cling to the highest tip of a swaying bough to swing on it. He has seen the blue titmouse, the bearded titmouse, penduline titmouse, thistle finch, barley bird, birch siskin, and others do this.[38]
But I must now leave the interesting world of birds and turn to some other phenomena. Finsch has observed the habits of seals in the vicinity of San Francisco, and describes them graphically. While the move-
(111) -ments of these lumbering animals on land are remarkable, it is in the water that their skill is most admirably displayed. They may be seen plunging into the sea, either sliding down the smooth, sloping sand banks or throwing themselves from a high rock; then they carry on their play like dolphins, rapidly throwing themselves over so that the belly is uppermost, and sometimes springing entirely out of the water. They swim round in circles, now and then leaping up, splash about, whirling and turning and tumbling about like mad, and so entirely forgetting themselves that the wary hunter can easily come within harpooning distance and capture them. The behaviour of seals in captivity is equally remarkable.
In speaking of dolphins, Lösche says: " Every seaman is delighted to see a school of dolphins. The cheery travellers hurry along through the swelling waves in a long and regular train, pursuing their way with a speed that suggests a race, and with leaps of wonderful agility. Their glittering bodies rise in the air in fine curves from one to two yards wide, fall headlong into the water, and soon spring up again, carrying on the game. The jolliest of the flock turn somersaults in the air, turning up their tails in a most comical manner. Others fall flat on side or back, and still others remain bolt upright, dancing along with the help of their tails until they have made three or four forward movements. They no sooner see a ship under full sail than they turn about and follow it, and then begins real sport. They circle around the vessel, leap ire front of it, and make the best possible exhibition of their skill. The faster the boat moves the more riotous their antics." Brehm gives this description of the exercise of a caged marten: " He amused himself for hours at a time
(112) making bounds that brought him to one wall of his cage, where he quickly turned and sprang back, landing in the middle of the floor, then to the other wall and back —in short, describing the figure 8, and with such rapidity that its outline seemed to be formed of the animal's body."[39]
A caged fox that I have observed behaved in the same way, except that his motion was in a circle, because on leaping to one wall he rebounded to the opposite one, and only then came to the floor. Every visitor to zoological gardens or menageries is familiar with the tiger's ceaseless walking up and down, the constant waving to and fro of the badger's and bear's fore paws, and other such motions. They are all playful, and are the best possible examples of discharge of superabundant nerve force; for, of course, caged animals do not have a sufficient outlet for their energies. However, the kind of movement is not determined by outward circumstances, but, like all play, rests on an instinctive basis. A hunter, cited by Tschudi, testifies that the badger when wild and free and especially comfortable waves his fore paws indolently. The decidedly rhythmical character of such movements is noteworthy. Indeed, they tend to prove that all free motion unimpeded by other forces is likely to be rhythmical.
Schlegel tells of a tame leopard that was very fond of children—"especially of a little girl five years old, whom he often jumped over in play, and with such ease that without any preparatory running he crouched and easily bounded higher than the child's head."
(113) Young bears are exceedingly playful. One that I watched for a long time galloped with indefatigable energy around the great kennel, directing his course through the water pool each time. His noisy splashing seemed to give him particular pleasure. The young badgers in Regent's Park, London, amuse visitors by turning somersaults hundreds of times in succession in the same spot. The wild buck gives expression to its joy in graceful, sportive leaps.[40] Such leaps, alternating with tearing madly around, are expressions of well-being which so intoxicate the young hare that his worst enemy, the fox, creeps up unawares. Buffaloes, tapirs, and crocodiles sport in the water as night comes on. The leaping of young horses, asses, sheep, and goats is familiar. A phenomenon pointed out to me by Director Seitz illustrates how closely such movement plays are connected with habits which are indispensable in the serious struggle for life. He writes: " It is my impression that, in general, the play of animals exercises them in directions that will be useful for them in the necessary struggle for existence. The gazelle practises long jumping and leaping over bushes; goats and sheep, that live in mountains, the direct high jump." Many will be surprised to find an explanation for such goat leaps, which usually make us laugh, and are certainly extraordinary movements and wholly inexplicable on level ground. They are, however, necessary practice for life in rocky hills.
" A two-weeks-old goat," says Lenz, " not satisfied with the remarkable leaping record which he had already made, had the greatest desire to attempt breakneck feats. His motto was ` Excelsior.' His greatest
(114) pleasure was to clamber on piles of wood or stone, on walls and rocks, and to mount the stairs."[41]
The purely playful motions of cats should be mentioned here. They delight in racing about, but not so often, I think, in circles, as dogs do. They prefer straight lines and sharp turns with the genuine goat jump. This sudden flight into the air, which appears to take place without the animal's knowledge or intention, can not here be preparatory to life in the mountains, but the cat finds the high jump very useful, not only in pouncing on its prey, but also in escaping its hereditary enemy. Chamois are, of course, adepts in high jumping. A very remarkable movement play is reported of them, whose actual occurrence was vouched for to Brehm by two witnesses. " When in summer the chamois climb up to the perpetual snow, they delight to play on it. They throw themselves in a crouching position on the upper end of a steep, snowcovered incline, work all four legs with a swimming motion to get a start, and then slide down on the surface of the snow, often traversing a distance of from a hundred to a hundred and fifty metres in this way, while the snow flies up and covers them with a fine powder. Arrived at the bottom, they spring to their feet and slowly clamber up again the distance they have slidden down. The rest of the flock watch their sliding comrades approvingly, and one by one begin the same game. Often a chamois travels down the snow slide two or three times, or even more. Several of them frequently come roughly together at the bottom." If this description is to be relied upon, we have here, as in the swinging of birds and many other forms of experimentation,
(115) genuine play. I do not consider this coasting impossible, since the chamois must frequently make their way across snow-fields, and no doubt often slide down unintentionally. I have seen a young dog slide all the way across the room with his fore feet in a slipper, using his hind feet as propellers, and all the while snapping and snarling. In such cases accidental movements are made, which may be repeated intentionally later. The following incident, related by Alix, points more directly to this supposition than the account of the coasting chamois: " While manoeuvring in the Alps with a squadron of my regiment, I was botanizing one day in the neighbourhood of Briançon, followed by one of those stray dogs that so frequently attach themselves to moving troops. Just as I was about to begin the descent by the interminable winding path which gives access to the defile, I noticed that the dog, instead of following me, turned toward one of the steep declivities of the mountain side, where there was an accumulation of snow. Being puzzled to understand his behaviour, I stood still and took in every movement of the animal. And I was well rewarded, for by so doing I became witness to a strange spectacle, most wonderful even to the man accustomed to the unlimited resourcefulness of dogs. Placing himself on his back, his paws folded, his head bent forward, the intelligent animal slid down on the snow crust to the very base of the mountain. Arrived at the edge of the snow bed, lie quietly rose, cast his eye toward me. wagged his tail, and lay down on the grass to wait for me."
Alix supposes the dog to have reasoned that the way could thus be shortened. I consider more probable the rather vulgar explanation that the dog had learned this remarkable trick from rubbing his too populous
(116) back on the snow. However, this forms a companion piece to the tale of the chamois.
The effort of puppies to walk is the first manifestation of movement play. At first they can only creep about with difficulty, and when they learn to stand up, an attempt to bark is enough to upset them. As soon as they can stand decently they at once try to gallop, usually in a slanting direction. By constant practice the necessary accuracy is gained for carrying on their chasing and fighting games.
The play of grown dogs in water is noteworthy. The Newfoundland especially is such an enthusiastic swimmer that he has been known to leap from a bridge to get to his beloved element. However, as most of the play of dogs belongs in another category I shall not dwell on it here, except to record what in our family we call the run-fever, the aimless and objectless running about that is to be observed of little dogs in a large room, but of large dogs only in the open air. He tears about wildly, mostly in curves, though our fox terrier loves to dash off straight as a line to a great distance till he is lost to the eye of his vainly whistling master. It might be said that this points to imaginary prey,[42] and that this is accordingly a chase play rather than a movement play. Romanes tells of a poodle, named Watch, that belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that hunted for imaginary pigs when he heard the word called out. He went so far as to beg to be let out, running to the door for the purpose, and rushing out without any further instigation than that the word "pigs" should be mentioned. It is difficult to determine whether he really imagined the pigs or not, but such
(117) actions are common enough. For instance, my pug, who is a sworn foe of cats, flies to the garden and all along the fences if he hears the cry " St! cats! " I am doubtful, however, whether this is properly called play; at any rate, it is quite different from the run-fever, for now the pug runs with loud cries and sharp attention, while in the run-fever the dog moves off silently and looks neither to the right hand nor to the left. Consequently, I look upon the latter as play purely for the sake of the movement. Perhaps in a sense the same may be said of the propensity some dogs have for taking walks. A bulldog of very philosophical disposition that I owned when I lived in Heidelberg, took regular, solitary walks that threatened to be expensive to his master. He would go off without his muzzle, a thing forbidden by the authorities; could be seen strolling boldly past the police office, climbing the Schlossberg, and entering the garden of the palace, where dogs are not allowed unless led by some one. Of course, we do not know how much weight to attribute to the attractions of digging under the curbing, sniffing at corners, and other pleasures of freedom, yet I am sure the dog delighted in the walk for its own sake, and am not afraid of contradiction on this point from those who know dogs.
Last of all we must consider the monkeys. Their movement plays may be divided into four groups: climbing, leaping, swinging, and dancing. It is unnecessary to describe the behaviour of caged monkeys, for even the most careless sightseer stands long in front of a monkey house in a zoölogical garden. I therefore confine myself to some reports of their play when at liberty, supposing the clambering about a ship to be free motion. Captain Smith had an orang-outang three months on board his vessel and allowed him perfect
(118) freedom. Climbing and exercising in the rigging seemed to give him the greatest pleasure, for he indulged in it many times a day, and in such a manner as to astonish all beholders with his dexterity. Bennett makes a similar report of a specimen that he brought to Europe. A female ape (Spinnenaffe), whose habits have been well described by an Englishman, also played in the rigging. When " Sally " really wanted to have some fun she danced with such gaiety and abandon on the sail yards that a spectator could hardly distinguish arms, legs, and tail. At such times the name " spider ape " seemed especially appropriate, for she resembled a giant tarantula in her motions. During this performance she would stop from time to time and gaze, with familiar nods, at her admirers, wrinkle up her nose, and emit short low sounds. She was usually liveliest at about sunset. Her special delight was to clamber up the rigging till she reached a horizontal sail yard or a slender spar. Here she hung firmly by the end of her tail and swung to and fro.[43] According to Duvaucel, " the gibbon climbs with incredible rapidity up a bamboo stalk or to the top of a tree, there swings to and fro several times, and then, aided by the impetus so gained, throws himself a distance of twelve or thirteen metres. Repeating this three or four times in rapid succession, his progress appears much like the flight of a bird. One is forced to believe that the consciousness of his unparalleled dexterity affords him pleasure, for he leaps unnecessarily over spaces that he could easily avoid by a alight detour, varies his course, leaping to promising boughs, swinging and hanging there, and again launching out in the air with unfailing certainty toward a new
(119) goal. He seems to proceed magically, flying without wings; he lives more in the air than on the branches." [44]
The young gorilla of which J. Falkenstein gives so interesting a description, "performs so abandoned a dance, falling over himself, whirling about, tumbling from side to side, that the looker-on is forced to believe that he has in some way become intoxicated. And in truth he is drunk with pleasure, and by means of these antics he proves his own strength to himself." [45] The swinging of monkeys is also a proof of the invention of plays in the animal world. The explanation is not difficult, seeing that the movements are often made intentionally as the monkeys go about in the trees. The pleasure they take in it seems to be unlimited. Pechuël-Loesche tells us of one very clever ape that made himself a swing, a case that would have surprised Descartes! A tame long-tailed monkey that the members of the Loango Expedition kept at their station, a so-called M-bukubuku, " was a devotee of swinging to an unprecedented degree, and knew well how to satisfy his propensity. On any tree that he could reach, on the roof, and on his own kennel he found projections that served as supports, to which he fastened his long chain by climbing over them or going round in such a way that it caught, and in this way swung to his heart's content. He would go to work with admirable deliberation and measure off a length of his line sufficient for the purpose, and would repeat a successful manner of fastening even after months." [46]
(120)
3. Hunting Plays.
Instinct is much more conspicuous in this class of plays than in those which we have heretofore considered, for by means of them the young animal, even while yet having its food provided by parental care, practises sportively those movements which will be used in earnest later on.
Even the domestic animals—the dog for instance, that may never feed on prey, but eat all its life from the prosaic feeding trough—carry on with passionate zeal, plays the origin of which must be sought in the ancestral manner of feeding. A glance over this class of plays shows us that they naturally fall into three groups: (a) Play with actual living prey. (b) Play with living mock prey. Animals of the same kind usually chase one another reciprocally; thus we have to consider the letting themselves be chased, as well as the active chasing. (c) Play with lifeless mock prey, with a stick of wood, a ball, or other such objects. I have arranged the order of these groups so that the examples most illustrative of simple play shall come first, but it would be a mistake to suppose that actual time sequence is indicated by this order. On the contrary, play with lifeless objects is in many cases first in point of time.
(a) Is the treatment of living prey by carnivorous animals properly called play? A beast of prey seizes his victim, does not kill it, but lets the slightly wounded creature loose on the ground. It takes to flight, but is instantly recaptured, perhaps shaken a, little, and again set free. This time it lies motionless, perhaps from weakness, perhaps to feign death. But the merciless beast keeps teasing it until it again attempts flight, only to be seized once more by its tormentor. In this
(121) way the "play" goes on until the victim really dies and is devoured. I was formerly of the opinion that the instinct here called out should not be regarded as play at all, but had an entirely different meaning. The explanation once suggested by G. Jaeger—namely, that it was done for the purpose of improving the flavor (as connoisseurs think that hunted game is especially good)—does not appear probable, though it can hardly be proved to be impossible. There may be some other reason unknown to us for this phenomenon which excludes it from the category of plays, but it is generally regarded as belonging there. Darwin unhesitatingly enumerates it among other plays,[47] and Scheitlin says of the eat: " She lets the mouse loose again and again in order to catch it each time, and plays with it unmercifully. blouse and rolling ball are all alike to her, as the real and the toy beetle are to the child."[48] Even if this be true, there is still a difficulty. Granting that the animal sees no difference between the living and the lifeless, how are we to explain the awakening of playfulness in the very act of slaying, and so strongly as to hold in check that instinct, which is so powerful in a beast of prey?
The whole thing is usually ascribed to a natural instinct for cruelty. Even Romanes says, " The feelings that prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse can only, I think, be assigned to the category to which by common consent they are ascribed-delight in torturing for torture's sake."[49]
If this is true it is undoubtedly a play. The disposition to cruelty would explain the tendency to play at
(122) killing, even in the midst of the actual thing. But is this consensus omnium to be depended on? Is not pleasure from cruelty a kind of degenerate aesthetic satisfaction that requires higher intellectual capacity than animals possess? I do not venture an assertion, but I confess that the current idea seems to me very improbable. A remark of Dr. Seitz in a letter to me seems to be nearer the truth: "The cat's play with a captive mouse probably serves to practise the springing movements, as well as affords an opportunity to study the mouse's way of running and to acquire the necessary stealth in ambush."
Thus torture of living prey would be an instinctive exercise for acquiring skill in the chase, later turned to account by the animal; it is a play, whose usefulness accounts for its existence, unusual as it is. Appearing in early youth, it becomes firmly established in riper years, and the pleasure in being a cause plays its part.
Without assuming a positive attitude on this question, I proceed to adduce some examples of torture by beasts of prey. The cat has been referred to, and every one is familiar with its habits. The wild cat also, according to Scheitlin, plays with captive mice and birds. A leopard that belonged to Raffles played for hours with the fowls that were fed to him on the ship. Indeed, it can safely be said that such behaviour is characteristic of the whole feline tribe.
"Most of the cat family," says Brehin, " have the horrible practice of torturing their victims, pretending to set them at liberty,until the wretched creatures at last succumb to their wounds." Lenz relates of a marten: " His hunger satisfied, he would play for hours with the birds brought to him. He liked little marmots even
(123) better; he leaped and sprang about the incensed and spitting animals, incessantly dealing them blows first with the right paw and then with the left. If he were hungry, however, he made no such delay, but devoured them at once, bones, skin, and hair."[50]
I have included the dog's toying with a beetle under the head of experimentation, though perhaps it would be more appropriately placed here, for my terrier plays with mice that he catches just as a cat does. It is certain, too, that foxes torment their victims long and cruelly and instruct their young in the art.[51] The mother weasel brings living mice to her little ones to play with and to practise on.[52]
" In Altures," says Humboldt, " we had an adventure with a jaguar. Two children, a boy and a girl of eight and nine years, were playing near the village. A jaguar came out of the woods and bounded near them. After leaping about for some time, he struck the boy on the head with his paw, at first softly, and then so hard that the blood streamed forth. At this the little girl seized a stick and beat the animal till it fled. The jaguar seemed to be playing with the children, as a cat does with mice."[53] Finally, I may mention the cormorant that is described in Darwin's Descent of Man (ii, p. 52) as playing in a similar way with fishes.
(b) Play with living mock prey. An animal will play with another, usually but not always of the same kind, as he does with his prey. In that case both are playing, and the value of such practice for the serious tasks ûf after-life is evident. Among beasts of prey
(124) the pursuer is far more active and interested in the game than the fleeing one, while with herbivorous animals the contrary is the case; with these, as Dr. Seitz writes, the animal that is fleeing plays the principal part, the other merely co-operating and doing its share in a perfunctory sort of way. The dog offers an excellent example of the first class. A dog that sees another approaching, frequently crouches in the open street and remains quite motionless, with all the signs of eager alertness. This instinctive lying in wait is evidently rudimentary, for when the other dog comes up the one in ambush rises forthwith and goes to meet his comrade. Sometimes the dog goes so far as to hide himself. Not long ago I saw a young fox terrier leaping around the corner of a house to hide himself from another dog that was coming. Then followed the invitation to play, made in a very characteristic manner, with legs wide apart, a position well adapted to facilitate the rapid projection of the body in flight. All ready to start, he throws himself from right to left several times, in a semicircle, before the flight really begins. The other in the meantime is a fine picture of hypocrisy, as he glances indifferently about as if the whole affair were nothing to him. Now, however, the fun begins, as the leader springs forward, though not at full speed, and the other gives chase with enthusiasm. Should the pursuer overtake his mock prey, he tries to seize him in the neck or by the hind leg, just as a dog does when chasing in earnest. The other, without slackening his pace, turns his head to defend himself by biting. Then a tussle often ensues. At last the players stand with tongues hanging out, breathing heavily, until one of them suddenly whirls around and the play begins anew. The elements involved in all this are lying in wait, hiding, invitation
(125) to play, deception, fleeing, pursuing, overtaking, seizing, and defence. I am anxious to emphasize the various movements involved on account of the unsatisfactory nature of the reports of the series of examples I am about to relate. In order to avoid having too many subdivisions, I cite cases of play between animals of different kinds and between animals and men promiscuously.
"While I was staying in Tunis," says Alix, " my dog Sfax doted on playing hide and seek with the native babies . . . . Concealing himself among the woodpiles, Sfax described the most complicated zigzag, and just when five or six of the youngsters thought they were going to put their hands on him he would appear on a pile twenty metres away, sometimes in front, sometimes behind, sometimes to the right or left. He would stand there with an air of careless indifference till his playfellows ran within two or three metres of him; then gaily wagging his tail, he set off to make more zigzags, and so on for more than an hour."[54]
Young horses gallop about the meadows, leaping with joy; those grazing on the Russian steppes sometimes accompany travelling carriages at a gallop for many hours.[55]
Brehm says: " The tame cougar (puma) plays with his master, delighting to hide at his approach and then spring out unexpectedly, just as a tame lion does. It may well be supposed that such savage demonstration of affection is anything but agreeable at an inopportune moment."[56] Hudson considers the puma the most
(126) playful of animals, with the exception of the monkey. An Englishman. told him the following incident: He was once compelled to spend the night in the open air in the pampas of La Plata. It was a bright moonlight night, and at about nine o'clock he saw four pumas approaching, two adult animals and two half-grown young ones. Knowing that these animals never attack men, he quietly watched them. After a while they came very near him as they chased one another and played at hide and seek like kittens; and finally they jumped directly over the motionless man several times. The mother cat will run forward some distance and call the little ones after her. P. Kropotkine had a cat that played regular hide and seek with him.[57] Monkeys do the same, both on the ground and among the branches.
Young wolves play just as dogs do, and it is at least in part a chase that Brehm describes of the weasel: " Until these charming little creatures are quite grown they play often during the day with their parents, and it is a sight as strange as it is beautiful to see a company of them collected in a meadow on a bright day. The play goes merrily on. From this or that hole a little head pops out and small bright eyes glance from side to side. Everything being quiet and safe, one after another comes out of the ground to the fresh grass. The brothers and sisters tease one another, romp and chase, and so cultivate the agility that is their natural inheritance."
The head forester Nördlinger relates the following of two ravens and a weasel; The latter had taken refuge in a street gutter. As quick as lightning he darted out, rustled through the dry leaves that partly covered the
(127) ground, and made a pretended attack on one of the ravens; throwing himself about among the leaves, like a fish on land, and pretending to snatch the birds, he frightened his victims by the wildest, most dexterous leaps, during which the white belly was as often uppermost as the brown back. Then he fled back to the gutter, from which only his fore legs protruded; or he took up his position on the street, awaiting the attack of the raven which followed his own, and evidently with as little serious intent. The raven, with head outstretched, ran after the alert creature, but with small success, for he was not inclined to test his agility seriously against the powerful beak of one or perhaps both of the birds. The game lasted with many variations on both sides for about ten minutes, when it was interrupted by my dog, and the ravens flew away.[58]
Beckmann very beautifully describes the play of a badger. " His only playmate was an exceedingly clever and sensible dog, which I had accustomed from its youth to live with all sorts of wild animals. Together they went through a series of gymnastic exercises on pleasant afternoons, and their four-footed friends came from far and near to witness the performance. The essentials of the game were that the badger, roaring and shaking his head like a wild boar, should charge upon the dog, as it stood about fifteen paces off, and strike him in the side with its head; the dog, leaping dexterously entirely over the badger, awaited a second and third attack, and then made his antagonist chase him all round the garden. If the badger managed to snap the dog's hind quarters an angry tussle ensued, but
(128) never resulted in a real fight. If Caspar, the badger, lost his temper he drew off without turning round, and got up snorting and shaking and with bristling hair, and strutted about like an inflated turkeycock. After a few moments his hair would smooth down, and with some head-shaking and good-natured grunts the mad play would begin again."
Alix says that goats often play at hide and seek with the village children.[59] Young foxes play this game together, and so do squirrels.[60] The female marten carries on all sorts of gambolings with her young. The little ones run after her, she leaps over them, springs and whirls about like mad in every direction.[61] Fraulein Minna Haass, of Rösterberg, had a tame fawn named Lieschen that followed her mistress all about, came at her call, and manifested a real attachment for her. " The animal also cherished a friendship with two huge mastiffs, and delighted to play with them. When ready for a game, the fawn would approach the dogs as they lay before the door, tap them with her fore-foot, and take to flight. At this signal a game followed exactly like the hide and seek played by children, and a beautiful sight it was. If the dogs were disinclined to play, Lieschen kept urging them till they came."[62]
Antelopes when followed keep the same distance from a pursuer, as if they were mocking at him. Seals chase one another vigorously in the water. Birds, too, have a kind of play that is like chasing. Naumann says
(129) that, as autumn comes on, the redstart and their young may be seen chasing and teasing one another. Scheitlin tells of a tame stork " that very easily made friends, especially with children, and would even play with them, running after them with outstretched wings and catching hold of their coats or sleeves with his bill, and then back, looking round to see if the children followed. It would wait to be caught by the wing and then start after the children again. This scene was repeated as often as the children played `catcher' in the street."[63] A. Gunzel relates of a tame and trained magpie: " At the time of the morning recess she went to the playground of the school children, especially of the boys, to look on while they romped. She expressed her pleasure by hopping about excitedly and snapping her bill. The boys loved to tease her. She would stretch her long tail out, and when any one tried to touch it, spring so nimbly to one side that they never succeeded in catching her. Even I could not touch her then, though at other times she was quite docile. She enjoyed this play, and would follow any one who caught at her tail in order to repeat the game."[64] The older Brehm relates of the golden-crested wren: " This little bird carries on a strange performance in the fall, from the beginning of September to the end of November. It begins by calling out repeatedly `Si,si!' whirls around, and flaps its wings. Others answer to the call, and they collect, all going through the same motions. From two to six usually play together." [65]
" The woodpecker," writes Walter, "is an enthusiastic player, and often has his parents as playmates. A
(130) shaking twig or bit of cloth sets the whole family into the most joyous agitation
for fully five minutes. They clamber about a tree like monkeys, hiding with outstretched
wings behind the trunk till they are found, and then they all run and dance around the
tree, chasing and teasing each other."
We must always remember in estimating these actions of birds that most of them are
probably connected with courtship. But Huber's observations of ants —which, however,
have been questioned—indicate that these insects actually do play at hiding and
chasing.[66]
(c) Play with lifeless objects. It usually appears, as I have said, before the other two kinds of play already mentioned.
The sportiveness of kittens is alone sufficient to prove that play is founded on instinct. The tiny creature creeps from its nest, still blind, but as soon as even one eye is open it toys with every rolling, running, sliding, or fluttering object in its reach,[67] and only when it has practised on such things and become prepared for the real business of a preying animal does the old cat bring living prey to it. In this case play is surely not the child of work, as Wundt calls it, but rather it is Ziegler who is right when he says that work is the child of play.[68] Various kinds of movements are distinguishable in a cat's play with balls, suspended cords, bundles of paper, etc. A moving object is best to test this with, for, " caeteris paribus, objects moving slowly fasten the attention most readily "[69] —a fact of significance in the struggle for life.
(131)
Observation of this motion produces in the young animal first perfect motionlessuess, attended by that strenuous attention that we call " lying in wait," whose analogue is found in the feigning of death by an animal when pursued. Actual deception is often involved in this lying in wait, for the cat appears to be looking in an entirely different direction while she creeps up noiselessly with snakelike movements. Then comes the spring on the object, which is clutched with the teeth from above and the claws at the sides. If the object is quite near, or if it hangs like a suspended string, grabbing at it with the claws is substituted for this process.
We may safely assume that the cat does not recognise mock prey as such at this early stage, but we can not be sure, on the contrary, that she thinks it is real prey.
The sight of the moving object is sufficient to account for the whole series of instinctive acts, without calling into use any higher psychological accompaniments. I am therefore not far from right if I use the play with its own or the mother's tail as an illustration here for the sake of simplicity. So far as it is not experimenting, it belongs in the category of chase plays. I have slightly abridged Brehm's beautiful description: " The playfulness of cats is noticeable in their first infancy, and the mother does everything in her power to encourage it. She becomes a child with her children from love of them, just ac a human mother forgets her cares in play with her darlings. The cat sits surrounded by her little ones and slowly moves her
(132) tail, which Gesner regards as the indicator of her moods. The kittens hardly yet grasp its language, but they are excited by the motion, their eyes take on expression, and they prick up their ears. One and another clutch awkwardly after the moving tail, one tries to clamber on its mother's back and turns a somersault, another has spied the movement of its mother's ears and busies itself with them, while the fifth goes on placidly sucking. The contented mother quietly submits to it all."
I believe that all higher psychological accompaniments are wanting in the first play of young animals, such as with a block or ball or anything of the sort, but are necessarily developed by constant repetition of the game. If a cat keeps running after such a ball, in time a sort of rôle-consciousness comes to her, something like that which accompanies human actions that are intentionally make-believe. This " doing ,as if," or playing a part, will appear very important in our later observations, and I think we may be sure that the kitten possesses it in some degree at least after frequently repeated experiments. A circumstance that I have not yet mentioned seems to increase this probability. When the ball stops rolling the kitten starts it up again by a gentle tap with her paw, in order to begin the game again. This seems like conscious self-deception, involving some of the most subtle psychological elements of the pleasure that play gives.
Dogs, too, are inclined to chase any moving object. Brehm includes it among their characteristic. " They all run after Whatever goes quickly by them, be it man, passing wagon, ball, stone, or what not, attempt to seize and hold it, even when they know perfectly well that it is a thing of no use to them." Every one knows the ridiculous way in which a young dog will chase his own
(133) tail, faster and faster, until he falls down. A suspended cord is a welcome plaything to him, too; if he finds he can not pull it down, lie seizes it in his teeth and jerks it from side to side, with threatening growls. Close observation of such actions clearly reveals their instinctive origin. The way young dogs will shake a cord or scrap of cloth is excellent practice for shaking their prey—a habit which apparently has the double object of stunning the victim and deepening the hold of the dog's teeth.
The fact that dogs beg to have a stone, a piece of wood, or a ball thrown for them, shows how greatly their chasing impulse is excited by the sight of moving objects. While his master is getting ready for the throw the dog stands waiting with eager eyes and all ready for the spring, and as soon as the object flies off he is after it and trying to seize it. Small dogs seem to hold their prey entirely with their teeth, while my St. Bernard leaps upon the object with his fore paws stiffly extended and deals a blow which would break the backbone of small animals. He will gnaw for a long time on a piece of wood that he has run after, carrying it away in his mouth as he would real prey, and clinging to it energetically if any effort is made to get it from him. This instinct makes it easy to train dogs to carry sticks or baskets. We can be much more confident that a dog has some consciousness of the pretence of the thing in his play than we are in the case of the cat. He knows perfectly well that the stiek which he brings and lays at his master's feet thne slid time again is not alive, and he, too, sets his plaything in motion when there is no one to throw it for him, by seizing it in his mouth and tossing it up in the air. Many dogs delight to play with the feet of their master or mistress
(134) —a black boot has a particular fascination for the rat terrier. It is a pretty sight to see one of them push back a lady's skirt with his paw to find her foot and then pounce upon it eagerly, never biting to hurt her, however—another proof of the consciousness of makebelieve. Examples of such play with lifeless objects are not abundant in the literature of the subject that I am acquainted with. However, I am able to cite a few.
Monkeys like to play with balls and other moving objects,[70] and, according to Rengger, young jaguars do the same, and often play for hours at a time with bits of paper, oranges, or wooden balls.[71] Captive bears, too, play with blocks and balls. Brehm says that young ocelots " taken young and with care, are very tame; they romp together like kittens, playing with a bit of paper, a small orange, and such objects "; and Hudson says of the puma that at heart it is always a kitten, taking unmeasured delight in its frolics, and when, as often happens, one lives alone in the desert, it will amuse itself by the hour fighting mock battles or playing at hide and seek with imaginary companions, lying in wait and putting all its wonderful strategy in practice to capture a passing butterfly. A tame puma that Hudson knew was delighted when a string or handkerchief was waved before him, and when one person was tired playing with him he was ready for a game with the next comer.[72] Many observers tell us of cranes: these remarkable and intelligent birds throw stones and hits
(135) of mud in the air, as dogs do, and try to catch them as they fall.[73]
4. Fighting Plays.
Such plays are usually to be regarded, in my opinion, as preparatory for the struggle for the female, though there are other reasons for the teasing and tussling of young animals. That pleasure in possessing power that appears in experimentation is certainly present here as well, and such fights serve also as practice for later battles other than those of courtship. Most animals, and especially carnivorous ones, are as pugnacious in conducting their games together as they are over actual prey, for their chasing games very easily lead to fights. But when we reflect that the defenceless creatures, whose only safety is in flight, fight among themselves just as much as the beasts of prey do, we seem to be shut up to the view that the principal use for playful contests is preparation for the later struggle for the female. The close connection between cruelty and pugnacity on the one hand, and sexual excitement on the other, is a fact confirmatory of this view. It is well known that there is a kind of voluptuous pleasure in cruelty. Preyer has published cases of perverted sexual feeling [74] where the highest degree of excitement was expressed by cruelty to smaller animals; and among some animals—hares, for instance—it is common for the female to be seriously abused in the act of pairing. Schaeffer says:[75] " Fighting and the impulse to kill are
(136) so universally attributes of the male animal that we can not doubt the connection between this side of the masculine nature and the sexual. The writer himself believes, from personal observation, that in the perfect male the first shadowy unrecognised suggestion of sexual excitement may be aroused by reading of hunting and fighting, and that the necessity for some sort of satisfaction gives rise to combative games, such as the ring fights of boys." If Schaeffer means that " the fundamental sexual impulse for the utmost extensive and intensive contact of the participants with a more or less clearly defined idea of conquest underlying it " is the main thing, I can only partly agree with him. My idea is that teasing and fighting are closely connected with the sexual life from the fact that they furnish practice for the contest of courtship, without being in any sense satisfying to the sexual instinct. Among many animals that play in this way the female yields to the victor of the males without resistance; and, besides, it frequently happens in the fighting of birds that there is no direct contact at all. Then, again, many young animals have special plays connected with pairing besides their fighting plays.
(a) Teasing arises when the desire to fight either does not seek or can not find direct satisfaction. A belligerent animal delights to provoke others that are perhaps not thinking of fighting. After establishing its supremacy by this means the teasing is apt to develop into cruel torture. There are some boys who can not resist dealing an unprovoked cuff to another boy, or pulling his hair, and there are just such animals. When Bennett tried to bring an ape to Europe there were other monkeys on the ship that would have nothing to do with him, and he took revenge by seizing them
(137) by the tails and dragging them about. He carried one poor fellow to the top of a mast in this way and let him fall. Brehm describes the behaviour of baboons toward two Java apes. "'These baboons, like all of their kind, were most jovial fellows, and took the greatest delight in teasing and tormenting the apes, which crouched close together, clinging to one another. The baboons flew at them, tore them apart, poked them in the ribs, pulled their tails, and tried in every way to break up their devoted friendship. They climbed over them, tugged at their hair, forced themselves between the inoffensive pair, until the frightened creatures sought refuge in another corner, only to be followed by their tormentors and maltreated afresh."
A female of the same kind that Brehm brought to Germany loved to tease the snappish house dog. When he took his midday meal out in the court and had stretched himself as usual on the greensward, the roguish monkey would appear, and, seeing with satisfaction that he was fast asleep, seize him softly by the tail and wake him by a sudden jerk of that member. The enraged dog would fly at his tormentor, barking and growling, while the monkey took a defensive position, striking repeatedly on the ground with her large hand and awaiting the enemy's attack. The dog could never reach her, though to his unbounded rage, for, as he made a rush for her, she sprang at one bound far over his head, and the next moment had him again by the tail.
" A raccoon that was kept on a farm with other tame animals," writes L. Beckmann, " was specially attached to a badger which was in the same inclosure. On hot days the latter was accustomed to take his nap in the open air under the shade of an alder. Then the mis-
(138) chievous 'coon found his opportunity, but as he feared the badger's bite he carefully kept his distance, satisfying himself with touching his victim softly in the rear at regular intervals. This was enough to keep the sleepy badger awake and reduce him to despair. In vain he snapped at his tormentor; the wary 'coon trotted to the edge of the inclosure, and scarcely had the badger composed himself again before he was at his old tricks." I know from experience that young horses often tease their masters. They will run up, stand very quiet with head held high, then spring back and turn with a menacing air. Scheitlin thus describes their actions: " A young horse chased a company of travellers in a narrow Alpine valley. He allowed them to walk past him undisturbed at first, then galloped after them, suddenly stood still threateningly, then turned back and pretended to graze, but soon came bounding on again. This was repeated several times to the no small alarm of the travellers, but he was evidently acting from pure mischief, just like a youth in high spirits."[76]
Herds of gnus behave in much the same way, so that travellers often have really to run the gauntlet among them.
Saville Kent contributes the following anecdote about dolphins: " A few dog-fish (Acanthus and Mustelus) three or four feet long now fell victims to their tyranny, the porpoises seizing them by their tails, and swimming off with and shaking them in a manner scarcely conducive to their comfort or dignified appearance . . . . On one occasion I witnessed the two cetacea acting evidently in concert against one of these unwieldy fish (skates), the latter swimming close to the
(139) top of the water and seeking momentary respite from its relentless enemies by lifting its unfortunate caudal appendage high above its surface—the peculiar tail of the skate being the object of sport to the porpoises, which seized it in their mouths as a convenient handle whereby to pull the animal about and worry it incessantly."[77]
Birds, too, give vent to the fighting impulse by teasing one another. Linden reports a parrot that teased others in a good-natured way, and Humboldt had a toucan which delighted in plaguing a sulky monkey that was very easily provoked. Brehm tells this of the ibis: " Those that I have known lived in comparative peace with all the birds that share their quarters, but assumed a certain authority over the weaker ones and seemed to take pleasure in teasing them. The flamingoes especially they could not let alone, and took the strangest way to torment them. As they were sleeping with head buried in their feathers, the ibis softly stole up and picked at their web feet, with no intention of hurting them, but from pure mischief. When a flamingo felt this annoying tickling he moved off, gave a startled glance at the ibis, and tried to get another nap, but his tormentor was soon after him and at the old game."
(b) Tussling among young animals. Before entering fully on this part of my subject I am going to cite a case that is to some degree problematical, to prove that I do not overlook the possibility that fighting play may he entirely due to the prcying instinct of a certain class of animals. 1 refer to the mock battles of ants. Biichner writes: " It is on the gymnastic exercises and plays of the Pratensis that Huber founded his
(140) celebrated observations. He saw these ants collect on bright days on top of their hills and behave in a way that he could only describe as regular ring games. They rose on their hind legs, seized each other with forefeet, feelers, and jaws, and actually wrestled, all in quite friendly fashion. When one gained the ascendency she would seize all the rest, one by one, and throw them over in a pile like skittles. Then she dragged them about in her jaws." This description of Huber's was published in many popular papers, but won little credence from the reading public. " Indeed, I myself," says Forel, " found it hard to believe, in spite of the accuracy with which Huber recorded his observations, until I saw it myself." A colony of Pratensis gave him this opportunity as he approached them carefully. The wrestlers seized one another with feet and jaws, rolled together to the ground, just as playful urchins like to do, pulled each other into their holes only to come out and begin over again. All this was apparently done without anger or spiteful feeling; it was clear that they were actuated only by a spirit of friendly rivalry.[78] Supposing that this is all play [79] an admission that I am not altogether prepared to make, there is, of course, no connection with courtship. " I can understand," says Forel, " that it must appear all the more incredible to those who have not seen it, when they reflect that sexual instinct can have nothing to do with this play." The mock fights of ants must then be entirely for practice preparatory to their unusually quarrelsome and predatory way of living.[80] Notwithstanding, I must hold
(141) to the belief that mock fighting in general is preparatory for the courtship contest. The fact that ants form an exception does not warrant the conclusion that the principle does not apply to the animals referred to in what follows.
Again, I begin with the dog. All kinds of puppies are indefatigable in playful romping, and gain in this way much that is needful in the serious struggles of later life. While they are very young, little dogs chase each other awkwardly and try to seize the throat. Fog terriers usually try to dodge the first attack,[81] others rise on their hind feet and fight with front paws and teeth. When one is thrown he at once turns on his back to protect his neck, and dexterously wards off the enemy with his fore feet. The victor, equally skilful, stands with feet wide apart over his fallen foe and prevents him from rising. If the dogs are of unequal size, the big one often lies down of his own accord and carelessly keeps the little one at bay, as he makes excited dashes for the enemy's throat from all sides. The quiet movements of a huge mastiff in contrast with the audacity and violence of a terrier, which attacked him in this way, have often amused me.
Tussling like this, where pleasure in the possession of power and the closely related rivalry, as well as mere pugnacity, play important parts, is almost universally practised among animals. All the feline tribe without exception indulge in it, young tomcats especially, so that the Germans have a special word for their fighting, "Katzbalgerei." At the age of two months young lions begin their play, which is like that of the. house cat, and the same is true of tigers, jaguars, leopards,
(142) ocelots, etc. Young wolves howl and yelp during their play; when tame they play with children. Brehm writes: " Hyenas, taken young, soon become accustomed to a particular person, and have a method of showing their pleasure at the appearance of a friend, that is not employed by any other beast of prey that is known to me. They rise with cries and jump about like mad, struggle with each other merely from pleasant excitement, bite one another, roll over and over on the ground, spring and leap and hop about the cage, all the time keeping up uninterruptedly a sound for which there is no word—the nearest approach, perhaps, is to call it a twittering." Young male weasels romp and tussle, sometimes biting one another severely, when the savage nature asserts itself. Sables often play merrily together, standing upright the better to fight, and I have seen two ant-eaters chasing and plaguing each other. Bennett says of young duckbills: "One evening my two little pets came out as usual toward dusk and ate their supper. Then they began to play like a pair of puppies, seizing one another with their bills, striking with the fore paws, clambering over each other, etc. When one of them fell in the strife and the other confidently expected him to get up at once and renew the battle, if it occurred to him to lie still and scratch himself, his comrade calmly watched the proceeding and waited till the play began again."
Bears stand upright when they fight, like squabbling boys. A young polar bear that I have watched was fond of playing with his mother; he chased her, bit her feet, and scratched her nose, while she tried to seize him as he lay on his back. Badgers "come out on still, sunny days and amuse themselves; the clumsy
(143) young ones hug each other like bears, tussle, and roll about, dealing cuffs right and left."[82]
Beckmann describes the actions of a tame young raccoon so beautifully that I can not resist quoting the whole passage: " He had formed an offensive and defensive alliance with a large bird dog. He was quite willing to be tied to it, and then both followed theirmaster step by step, though when the raccoon was alone on the chain he constantly pulled away. As soon as he was unchained in the morning he joyfully bounded off to find his friend. Standing on his hind feet, he threw his fore paws around the neck of the dog, whose head he gently bent forward. Then he examined and sniffed about his friend's body with curiosity and interest, seeming to discover new charms daily. Where the hair was rough, he carefully licked it down. The dog stood motionless and strangely serious during the whole inspection, which frequently lasted a quarter of an hour, changing his position or raising a limb when the raccoon indicated that it was necessary. He drew the line, however, on having the creature mount on his back, and the attempt was a signal for a prolonged tussle, where much courage and dexterity were displayed. The raccoon's mode of attack was to spring in an unguarded moment at the throat of his much larger and stronger opponent. Thrusting his body between the dog's front legs, it attempted to hang on by his neck. If he succeeded in this the dog was worsted and could only roll frantically on the ground in his endeavours to rid himself of the fervid embrace. To the credit of the rogue it should be said that he never
(144) abused his advantage, but contented himself with keeping his head close under the dog's throat, out of danger of a bite."
I have already referred to the fact that animals not inclined for fighting, except for defence, are as fond of playful contests in their youth as are the most dangerous and aggressive beasts of prey. In such cases we must expect to find in preparation for courtship the leading if not the only reason for such fighting. Young horses, donkeys, zebras, etc, tear madly over the plains, rear up at each other, strike with head and fore feet at one another's legs and neck. Calves, too, fight obstinately, approaching each other with lowered head, each trying to push the other back. Goats fight in the same way, and they too often measure strength in friendly rivalry. If the contest becomes earnest, they commonly rise on their hind feet and exert all their strength for a side push.
I have seen two Madagascar monkeys wrestling together just as dogs do, except that the play became more complicated from their being able to hold on with hands and feet.
Every one knows how lambs frisk and play about a meadow. Kids play just as the goats do, while young deer rise on their hind feet and strike out with the front ones.[83]
According to Steller, young sea bears also play and quarrel like puppies. The father stays by and watches them, and if a quarrel begins in earnest he urges them on with growls, and kisses end licks the victor, then pushes him to the ground, and is pleased if he resists. It is worthy of remark that seals, whose young, it seems,
(145) universally indulge in vigorous mock contests, are especially passionate and pugnacious during their courtship.
Finally, we will take a few examples from the birds. Water-wagtails chase and bite each other, apparently in play, as is seen "most commonly late in summer among young birds."[84] Young house and field sparrows peck one another soundly while they are carrying on their courtship plays, as do the nuthatch, starling, wood lark, water-wagtail, and goldfinch. Young partridges stands with wings wide spread and fight as hotly as if they were already contesting for a lady love. [85]
(c) Playful fighting between adult animals. Many a grown animal still takes pleasure in the mock combats that he learned in youth, and it is unnecessary to dilate on the usefulness of such sportive measuring of strength in keeping him fit for actual warfare. From a psychological point of view, however, this phenomenon is especially noteworthy from the fact that the adult animal, though already well acquainted with real fighting, still knows how to keep within the bounds of play, and must therefore be consciously playing a rôle, making believe. This can hardly be denied, I think, in some of the following cases.
Finsch says that seals make so much commotion in the water while playing that they appear to be fighting angrily, `though it is really all frolic, just as the biting is in which they indulge on land. Two of them open their powerful jaws, angrily howling in a fearful way, as though a serious combat were about to take place, but instead they lie down peacefully side by side, and perhaps begin mutual lickings."
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Friendly dogs often keep up their playful fights to an old age without ever being in the least angry; and among the cattle on Alpine pastures, where the greatest freedom is allowed them, these playful contests are frequent. " The Alpine cows," says Scheitlin, " learn to know their proper food more quickly, are more goodnatured, and take more pleasure in life than others. They fight valiantly, both in play and in earnest; with all their amiability and fondness for one another, they gore and push terribly, yet not in anger or bad temper, but like a lot of boys that fight to exercise their muscles. They will stand for a long time with heads lowered and horns interlocked, as if they would never separate. They do not look one another in the eye, as men do, when fighting; their eyes are on the ground, their whole mind is concentrated on the push. When one succeeds in shoving the other back, neither seems to care; the loser is not in the least ashamed, nor does the victor show any pride or pleasure. Some of them are very pugnacious, and display great courage and persistence." [86]
Females are thus seen to display the eagerness for combat that is in general so much more the characteristic of the male; just as among ourselves, masculine instincts often appear in women. 'Some female cats are twice as aggressive and bloodthirsty in their breeding time as any male, and there are some kinds of birds whose females imitate the song of the males and mingle in their battles.[87]
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Pechuël-Loesche tells us, in the report of the Loango Expedition, that African sheep are much more courageous and bellicose than the European varieties. The ram Mfuka that the travellers kept at their station seems to have been a regular tyrant. " He would not endure quarrelling or noise among the men or animals. When the amorous goats fought, he would look at them inquiringly for a while and then deliberately run them down. If the men quarrelled, he acted as peacemaker in the same thoroughgoing way, much to the amusement of all concerned. On one occasion the spokesman of an inland chief was talking violently before the door, when Mfuka gently came up, measured his distance, and dealt a mighty blow so energetically on the solidest part of the man's anatomy that he fell sprawling on the sand. That put an end to the speech. It was a rare spectacle to see the amazed ambassador sitting there, and the ram standing by solemnly gazing at him."[88]
Brehm says of two curly bears, a male and a female: " Soon began the merry game, in which they whirled about so that it was impossible to distinguish one from the other. They rolled on the floor like balls, seizing and hugging each other, using jaws and tails indiscriminately as weapons of offence and defence." It is noteworthy that they never paired, though Brehm hoped they would, and their play seems therefore to have only the significance that Schaeffer attaches to such romping.
Now a few examples from the 'birds. The hooded raven, which Naumann watched from his hiding place for hours at a time, is a very lively bird. " They often quarrelled, but never seriously; they danced and hopped,
(148) rolled over in the snow, lay on their backs, took constrained positions, and uttered strange cries, apparently with great effort."[89]
Sale, who brought the first kakapo to Europe in 1870, writes of this bird: " His sportiveness is remarkable. He runs from his corner, seizes my hand with claws and beak, and tumbles about like a kitten on the floor, still holding the hand; then he hurries off as if to prepare for another attack. He is sometimes inclined to be a little too rough in his play, but a mild reproof checks him, and he is really an amusing fellow. When I tried the experiment of bringing a dog or a cat to his cage he would dance up and down with wings outspread and making every pretence of anger, and his pleasure was evident when he succeeded in exciting the animal." To me it is very doubtful whether this was in truth only feigned anger. Naumann also regards the following familiar phenomenon as a play: " It is fine to see how the jackdaws amuse themselves during a strong wind at the top of a tower or tall tree. One will hustle another off and take his place, only to be pushed off in his turn by the next comer, and so on for hours. Crows often do this too."[90]
Perhaps Brehm's report of a buzzard in captivity belongs here also. This bird made friends with a little dog, perching between his feet when he lay down, frolicked with him, and tweaked his hair with its beak. Baldenstein had a tame vulture that was very fond of him. Even when he teased the bird it made only playful attacks on him, though under other circumstances it made terrible use of its dangerous weapons.
The question now arises whether such playful fight-
(149) -ing as we have been considering ever occurs during the breeding season. The contest for the possession of a female is usually a serious matter, often a life-and-death struggle, and yet may there not be some fighting connected with this period that is playful? Here, as in most questions of animal psychology, absolute certainty is unattainable, but we may inquire into the probabilities, and it seems to me not impossible that contests playful in character may take place even during courtship. Perhaps I may be allowed a human instance. The belligerent spirit of young peasants is certainly of this nature, little as the brawlers are conscious of it. And however serious the fights that arise on Sundays and holidays, they impress us as at bottom playful, for neither combatant wishes actually to injure the other, but rather to prove his own superiority, though this may involve a desperate struggle. The fencing of students, too, although often resulting in injuries that would be dangerous without the immediate service of a surgeon, are yet avowedly for sport. It occasionally happens that a desire for revenge leads to the inflicting of intentional and serious injury, but as a general thing it is all for practice in acquiring skill and courage for use in more serious circumstances. It may be the same with animals. Even when they have overstepped the bounds of the friendly tussling that we have been considering, and the contestants are angry and really trying to hurt one another, still there may be something of the temper of play. T do not assert that this is often the case, but I may give a couple of examples that at least give colour to the idea. We often see grown dogs chase each other with loud cries without coming to a fight at all, and this before the very eyes of the object of their rivalry. While snappish dogs bite one another sharply,
(150) it seems to be done chiefly to prove how formidable they are and how fearless. They slowly come together with stiffened legs, back up, and ears and tail erect; and each seeks to determine by characteristic and comic sniffing what sort of fellow he has to do with. Then they slowly walk around each other for some time, keeping the legs stiff and each with his head turned, as if aiming an attack at the other's throat. Even after all this they are very likely to separate quietly, but sometimes they come to open combat. With frightful screams they leap at one another, show their teeth, growling, and sometimes bite a little, but almost always part without having gone to the length of a serious struggle.
My other example is from Baldamus's description of the night heron: " When no marauder disturbs them they find means to torment one another, chasing and fighting with loud cries. They have a peculiar game of climbing, during which they sometimes get into the most ridiculous situations and scream constantly. For example, while a female is busy appropriating a twig or some such matter from a neighbouring nest, it occurs to the male to pick at the feet of a bird standing above him. The offended one spreads his wings threateningly, opens his beak, and tries to retaliate, but is so closely pressed by the aggressor that he retreats until the end of the limb is reached or the courage of despair inspires the victim. The amusing feature of it lies in the contract between the extravagantly threatening aspect of the aggrieved bird and his trifling efforts at defence. The wide-open beak, the constantly varying cries, ` Koau! krau! krau!' etc., the flaming eyes, red and flashing with rage, the wings raised so threateningly, the head alternately drawn back and protruded, the extraordinary
(151) contortions of the whole body, the erection of the head and neck feathers—all this leads one to expect a life-and-death struggle, and behold! they scarcely do more than touch each other with the tips of their wings, very rarely with the beak. They rage and storm like Homeric gods, but with no result."
According to Darwin, a competent observer goes so far as to say of the Tetrao umbellus: " The contest of the males was only a pretence arranged to display themselves advantageously before the admiring females collected near, for I have never been able to discover a mutilated hero, and seldom one with more than a feather turned."[91] Brehm and Naumann [92] both contribute to the following description of the remarkable behaviour of the willow wren, sometimes called the fighting wren, which before the pairing is a particularly peaceable bird: "But this quality disappears entirely as soon as the pairing time arrives; it is now that they deserve their second name, for the males fight continually and with no apparent cause [93] —if not over the female, over a fly, a worm, a beetle, a place to perch, anything or nothing. It is just the same whether females are present or not, whether they enjoy absolute freedom or are in captivity, whether they have been taken a few hours ago or have lived in a cage for years. In short, they fight at all times and under all circumstances. When free, they collect at an appointed spot; usually a moist elevation covered with short grass and about two metres in diameter is chosen for the arena, and is resorted to several times daily by a certain num-
(152) -ber of males .... The first arrival looks anxiously about for a second, but when he comes, should he prove not exactly fit, a third and fourth are awaited, and then the battle opens. Each having found his antagonist, they fall to, fly at each other, and fight vigorously till they are tired, when each returns to his place to rest and collect his strength for the next round. This goes on till they are exhausted and retire from the field, to return soon, however, in most cases. More than two never fight together, but if a good many are on the ground at once, as often happens, they fight in pairs, and cross one another in such marvellous leaps and bounds that a spectator at a little distance would think the birds were possessed of an evil spirit, or else gone crazy.
" When two of these birds come upon a grain at the same time, they both stand still at first, trembling with rage, then stooping so that the hind part of the body is higher than the head, and ruffling up their feathers, they dart at each other, dealing sharp blows . . . . Sometimes a female comes to the battle ground and takes a place with the fighting males, yet she does not long mix in the strife, but soon goes away. It may happen that a male accompanies her and stays with her, but two males never leave together or chase one another on the wing. The battle is fought out on the ground, and then peace is established"
5. Constructive Arts.
It is true that very few of the phenomena connected with building by animals have anything to do with the psychology of play, but before taking any further steps it is necessary to inquire into the part played by in-
(153) -stinct in the exercise of constructive skill by the higher animals, and especially by birds.
Wallace, in his Philosophy of Birds' Nests, has tried to prove that inherited instinct has very little to do with it. The material, he says, depends on circumstances, and the form partly on natural impulse, but chiefly on imitation. The young bird lives in the nest for days and weeks and learns to know its every detail. During the time he is learning to fly he studies the outside, and naturally keeps a memory picture of the parental home against his own time of need, when he imitates it. The manner of building which has become tradition through imitation, among savage tribes, is thus seen also among the higher animals.
Worthy of respectful consideration as these opinions undoubtedly are, it is extremely probable, to say the least, that Wallace has gone too far. Though here and there imitation may play a more or less important part in this work, it would be hard to dispense with the idea that hereditary impulse is, as a rule, responsible for the constructive skill of animals. The making of a chrysalis by the moth is so unquestionably instinctive that no one will deny it, and such facts among the lower orders naturally lead us to consider the case of higher animals analogous. It should be borne in mind, too, that young birds of the kinds that nest but once can not in this way learn the manner of constructing a nest, since the finished one shows little of the process. Weir wrote to Darwin in 1868: " The more T reflect on Mr. Wallace's theory that birds learn to make their nests because they have been themselves reared in one, the less inclined do I feel to agree with him . . . . It is usual with many canary fanciers to take out the nest constructed by the parent birds and to put a felt nest
(154) in its place, and when the young are hatched and old enough to be handled, to place a second clean nest, also of felt, in the box, removing the other, and this is done to avoid acari. But I never knew that canaries so reared failed to make a nest when the breeding time arrived. I have, on the other hand, marvelled to see how like a wild bird's their nests were constructed."[94]
It is, of course, difficult to determine how much is due to instinct and how much to intelligence, for no one claims that the building of higher animals is purely instinctive. Take, for example, Naumann's beautiful description of the skilfully made nests of the golden oriole, so like an inverted nightcap: " One of them (usually the male) comes flying with a long thread or grass blade in his bill and tries to fasten the end of it to a bough, perhaps with the help of his spittle, while the female catches the loose end and flies with it two or three times around the bough and fastens it in the same way to a forked limb opposite." [95]
This can not be all instinct; it is a case where inherited instinct and individual experience work together. The Mullers have expressed their belief that, though old birds usually build better than their young when there is any difference at all, still the instinct for building is, after all, a gift of Nature.[96]
" The ravenous screeching young owls do not think of making studies in architecture . . . . If the parents have a second brood, the young of the first never come near them, nor does it enter their heads to take lessons in building.[97]
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"As a matter of fact, no naturalist has yet been able to prove that old birds instruct their young in nest-building. It would be impossible for those that nest but once, as the young can not be present when the parents build; yet the next spring, when they are only a year old, they go about the construction of their own nest with as much assurance as if they had been in the business a long time."[98]
I cite Naumann next, who plainly indicates the twofold nature of the phenomenon: " We may well wonder at the mysterious instinct that enables young birds to build at their first attempt nests as perfect as those of their parents, and similar to them in material, position, and form; but it can not be denied that their art can be brought to even greater perfection by means of practice." [99]
In inquiring now as to the connection between these arts and the psychology of play, it becomes apparent that building in general is not playful. The earthworks of beavers, foxes, badgers, fish-otters, rabbits, etc., the leafy arbours of many kinds of apes, the nests of the perch, hedgehog, squirrel, field mouse, and bird serve a purpose that is directly useful. But since all art has at least some likeness to play, it follows that building of this kind is not properly called art, any more than the rude shelters of our primeval ancestors can be called products of architecture. Only in special cases, then, can we speak of playful building. Darwin sees such a case in the well-known fact that caged birds often build nests for amusement, when they have no occasion to use
(156) them.[100] The weaver bird offers the most familiar example. Carus, too, speaks of the plaiting " which many birds work at if prevented from building nests for themselves. It is especially interesting to watch the Ploceus sanguinirostris, now so common in Europe, when it can not build its peculiar purse-shaped nest, how it makes use of every available scrap of thread or straw in interweaving and adorning the bars of its cage. Surely this bird evinces a certain intelligence, which is not of the lowest order, as any one must be convinced who watches it at work for any length of time—how it holds a thread in its claw, seizes it with the beak, pushes it through the grating, ties a good knot, and proceeds to weave it in and out." [101]
This might be regarded as a kind of play, depending, however, upon the abnormal conditions of the bird's life. But for its artificial milieu it would build a nest, and since instinct forces it to build something, its activity assumes a playful character, owing to circumstances imposed by man. The attempts of some male birds to build nests on their own account, before they have assumed the responsibility of wedlock, may, however, be regarded as purely playful. The Müllers tell us that the wren does this, sometimes making two or three nests imperfectly alone, before he unites with the female in building the one on which she sits. " This haste to build," says the observer, " is nothing but happy sportiveness on the part of the little creature bewitched by love." It is probably due to the fact that the awakening of sexual passion arouses all the instincts connected with it to activity. Many birds pick on the ground during their
(157) courtship, as if trying to take something up, others will throw little stones behind them, and still others carry about on their beaks a small feather of the adored one. The action of the wren described above is only one step further in the same direction, and we find its culmination in the wonderful pleasure-house of the bower bird. Another manifestation of it is found in the fact that during the time of their courtship many female birds allow themselves to be fed by the male, just as the young are later on.
But more important for our purpose are the strange methods of building ornamentation employed by some animals. If no other meaning can be discovered for them, they may very properly be regarded as playful. I know of only two instances in mammals, and the first of these is imperfectly vouched for and dubious. Darwin says that the viscacha, a South American rodent, has the remarkable habit of collecting at the mouth of its burrow every portable object within its reach, so that heaps of stones, bones, thistle stalks, lumps of earth. dry dung, etc., are found near their holes. It is even related of a traveller who lost his watch in the region that he recovered it by searching among the viscacha mounds along the way.[102]
Hudson corroborates these reports, and finds a use for the habit: " For as the viscachas are continually deepening and widening their burrows, the earth thrown out soon covers these materials, and so assists in raising the mounds," which protect their dwellings from overflow.[103] lie further remarks that these animals always build in an open plain, on even, close-shaven turf, where
(158) an approaching enemy can easily be descried. This instinct for clearing the ground Hudson considers sufficient to explain the collection of objects lying about. If Hudson is right, as seems probable, there is, of course, nothing playful about it. Darwin, on the contrary, thought this habit of the viscachas analogous to that of certain birds which I will now describe. The Australian atlas bird (Calodera maculata) builds an intricately woven structure of twigs to play in, and collects near it shells, bones, and feathers, especially those brightly coloured. Mr. Gould says that when the natives lose any small, hard objects they at once search these places, and he knew of a pipe that was recovered in this way.[104]
If Darwin regarded these as the only examples of the kind, he must have overlooked some familiar instances. One at least relating to mammals is cited by James from Lindsay's Mind in Lower Animals. Referring to a nest of the Californian wood rat, which he discovered in an unoccupied house: " I found the outside to be composed entirely of spikes, all laid with symmetry, so as to present the points of the nails outward. In the centre of this mass was the nest, composed of finely divided fibres of hemp packing. Interlaced with the spikes were the following: About two dozen knives, forks, and spoons; all the butcher's knives —three in number—a large carving knife, fork, and steel; several large plugs of tobacco, . . . an old purse, containing some silver, matches, and tobacco; nearly all the small tools from the tool closets, with several large augers, . . . all of which must have been transported some distance, as they were originally stored in distant parts of the house . . . . The outside casing of
(159) a silver watch was disposed of in one part of the pile, the glass of the same watch in another, and the works in still another." [105]
The other examples are of birds. The so-called thieving of crows and ravens shows their characteristic bent in its simplest form, for they all delight to carry small, bright objects to their nests. Naumann certifies to it of the pond raven, crow, hooded raven, curlew, jackdaw, and magpie.[106] The bastard nightingale also likes to trim the outside of its nest with bark, feathers, shavings, and scraps of paper.[107] The Müllers describe a wren's nest that was lined with bright yellow chicken feathers.[108] Romanes says that there are "many species of birds that habitually adorn their nests with gaily coloured feathers, wool, cotton, or other gaudy material . . . . In many cases a marked preference is shown for particular objects, as, for instance, in the case of the Syrian nuthatch, which chooses the iridescent wings of insects, or that of the great crested flycatcher, which similarly chooses the cast-off skins of snakes. But no doubt the most remarkable of these cases is that of the Bays, bird of Asia, which, after having completed its bottle-shaped and chambered nest, studs it over with small lumps of clay, both inside and out, upon which the cock bird sticks fireflies, apparently for the sole purpose of securing a brilliantly decorative effect. Other birds, such as the hammer-head of Africa, adorn the surroundings of their nests, which are built upon the ground, with shells, bones, pieces of broken glass and earthenware, or any objects of a
(160) bright and conspicuous character which they may happen to find."[109]
Still more remarkable is the case of the bower bird, which does not, indeed, adorn its nest, but builds a playhouse, in the shape of a tunnel on the ground, entirely for the purposes of courtship, and decorates it in every possible way. Both sexes work in its construction, but the male is the director.
So strong is this instinct that it is practised under confinement, and Mr. Strange has described the habits of some satin bower birds which he kept in an aviary in New South Wales: " At times the male will chase the female all over the aviary, then go to the bower, pick up a gay feather or a large leaf, utter a curious kind of note, set all his feathers erect, run round the bower, and become so excited that his eyes appear ready to start from his head; he continues opening first one wing and then the other, uttering a low, whistling note, and, like the domestic cock, seems to be picking up something from the ground, until at last the female goes quietly toward him." Captain Stokes has described the habits and "playhouses" of another species—the great bower bird—which was seen "amusing itself by flying backward and forward, taking a shell alternately from each side, and carrying it in its mouth through the archway. These curious structures, formed solely as halls of assemblage, where both sexes amuse themselves and pay their court, must cost the birds much labour. The bower, for instance, of the fawn-breasted species is nearly four feet in length, eighteen inches in height, and is raised on a thick platform of sticks." [110]
(161) Moreover, these bowers are elaborately decorated, and the manner of decoration differs in the three varieties of birds. " The satin bower bird collects gaily coloured articles, such as the blue tail feathers of parrakeets, bleached bones, and shells, which it sticks between the twigs or arranges at the entrance. Mr. Gould found in one bower a neatly worked stone tomahawk and a slip of blue cotton, evidently procured from a native encampment. These objects are continually rearranged and carried about by the birds while at play. The bower of the spotted bower bird ` is beautifully lined with tall grasses, so disposed that the heads nearly meet, and the decorations are very profuse.' Round stones are used to keep the grass stems in their proper places and to make divergent paths leading to the bower. The stones and shells are often brought from a great distance. The regent bird, as described by Mr. Ramsay, ornamented its short bower with bleached land shells belonging to five or six species and with berries of various colours—blue, red, and black—which give it when fresh a very pretty appearance. Besides these there were several newly picked leaves and young shoots of a pinkish colour, the whole showing a decided taste for the beautiful. Well may Mr. Gould say, `These highly decorated halls of assembly must be regarded as the most wonderful instances of bird architecture yet discovered,' and the taste, as we see of several species, certainly differs."[111]
In reviewing these strange practices of birds found in such various parts of the earth, we find that, though here and there an explanation like that of Hudson for the viscachas may be hazarded, in the main no better
(162) ground exists for them than the fact that the birds take pleasure in possessing objects that are gaily coloured or bright. Our next question, then, is, Whence arises this delight in bright and gaily coloured things? Since Darwin's time it is the custom to attribute everything of this kind to a direct aesthetic enjoyment of the beautiful. But that is an unsatisfactory explanation, originating in a misconception of the essentials of aesthetics. At the most, such satisfaction as these birds feel can only be regarded as a stimulus to sensuous pleasure, which, strictly speaking, is not aesthetic enjoyment at all. For the full perception of beauty, the sensuous pleasure arises first when, through the function which I have called " inner imitation," the sensuously pleasing object takes on spiritual embodiment. It is highly improbable that a psychological operation such as this, which is rarely called forth even in men in its full strength, should be developed in animals. What they really feel is the pleasure of the senses produced by physical well-being without reference to aesthetics, such as may be produced in ourselves by the contemplation of a clear sky, pure air, and green fields. This sensuous delight in what is bright and gay is an important antecedent to aesthetic pleasure because it assures a lively perception of the object, but it should not be mistaken for aesthetic pleasure itself.
Further, we may well suspect that this delight in striking colours and forms is not unconnected with the sexual life. It is well known that Darwin teaches that these eharaeteristies in male birds largely control sexual selection. Later I shall discuss the question whether we can rightly refer the origin of such phenomena to sexual selection, even though its later influence be granted. There can be no doubt that animals are ex-
(163) -cited in this way by the display of what might be called their wedding finery, but this feeling may very well be extended by association to other and unusual things, all of which the birds are attracted to because of their tendency to produce sexual excitement.[112] The following anecdote, given to Romanes by a lady, illustrates this:
" A white fantail pigeon lived with his family in a pigeon house in our stable yard. He and his wife had been brought originally from Sussex, and had lived, respected and admired, to see their children of the third generation, when he suddenly became the victim of the infatuation I am about to describe.
" No eccentricity whatever was remarked in his conduct until one day I chanced to pick up somewhere in the garden a ginger-beer bottle of the ordinary brownstone description. I flung it into the yard, where it fell immediately below the pigeon house. That instant down flew pater familias, and to my no small astonishment commenced a series of genuflections, evidently doing homage to the bottle. He strutted round and round it, bowing and scraping and cooing and performing the most ludicrous antics I ever beheld on the part of an enamoured pigeon . . . . Nor did he cease these performances until we removed the bottle, and, which proved that this singular aberration of instinct had become a fixed delusion, whenever the bottle was thrown or placed in the yard—no matter whether it lay horizontally or was placed upright—the same ridiculous scene was enacted; at that moment the pigeon came flying down with quite as great alacrity as when
(164) his peas were thrown out for dinner, to continue his antics as long as the bottle remained there. Sometimes this would go on for hours, the other members of the family treating his movements with the most contemptuous indifference and taking no notice whatever of the bottle. At last it became the regular amusement with which we entertained our visitors, to see this erratic pigeon making love to the interesting object of his affections, and it was an entertainment which never failed, throughout that summer at least. Before next summer came he was no more."[113]
Romanes agrees with the lady who wrote the description in regarding this as a pathological case, but, even if that is correct, still the actions of this pigeon throw some light on the question we have been considering. In order to estimate their real relation to play we must return to our first division, namely, experimentation. Since seizing, holding, and carrying things about form one manifestation of experimentation, it is natural that an unusual object should excite the attention and give pleasure to animals. A child, too, takes pleasure in collecting bright objects, and the fact that they, as well as some birds—the warbler, for instance—are continually handling their treasures, carrying them from place to place and rearranging them, clearly shows the experimental character of such habits. An instinct very closely connected with experimentation, but not yet mentioned, is involved here, for where we find pleasure in power, pleasure in ownership is not far off. James calls this the instinct of appropriation or acquisitiveness. " The beginnings of acquisitiveness," says he, "are seen in the impulse which very young
(165) children display to snatch at or beg for any object which pleases their attention." [114] I regard the instinct whose mandate in the struggle for life is, " Keep what you can get," as very important. Men and animals must learn not only to acquire, but also to defend and protect their property with tenacious energy. How purely instinctive this is, is shown by the tame canary that will peck angrily at the hand of even its beloved owner, that has just given it the bit of salad or apple which it now defends.
But there is a playful side to it as well, as witness the stubbornness with which a dog at play will cling to the stick in opposition to his master. As James remarks, the zeal for collecting is the most common form of it among ourselves. " Boys will collect anything that they see another boy collect, from pieces of chalk and peach-pits up to books and photographs. Out of a hundred students whom I questioned, only four or five had never collected anything."[115] This passion is highly developed among the mentally deranged. Many patients in lunatic asylums have a mania for picking out and treasuring all the pins they can find. Others collect scraps of thread, buttons, rags, etc., and are happy in possessing them.[116] The thieving of jackdaws and magpies is something like this.
Finally, this observation is to be noted. In all the cases we have considered the desire to experiment with or to get possession of objects has been directed to such things as were bright or gaily coloured. Now, if we find in the preference for such things an antecedent
(166) to aesthetic enjoyment, surely the same instinct directed toward building can be regarded as an antecedent to aesthetic production. I find three principles influential in the production of human art: First, self-exhibition[117] (Selbstdarstellung); second, imitation; third, ornamentation. Now one of these and now another seems to be more important, but it always proves on examination that they are all essential. (I shall have more to say on this point in the last chapter.) The examples I have cited emphasize the principle of ornamentation chiefly, but the other two were present also. The habits of the warbler, for instance, suggest that inherited instinct is not working alone, but is assisted by tradition, for the younger birds seem to imitate what they see their elders do. So it appears that imitation has a part in the formation of any habit where the young prefer, as their model, those of the older ones who have distinguished themselves in the art in question.
Something akin to self-exhibition is discernible too. That feeling which is so plainly shown in the sportive love-making of the bird probably has something to do with the fanciful trimming of his nest. Just as we extend our ego to the ends of our canes and to the top of our high hats, as Lotze says, just as we are vain of well-made clothes, of a fine establishment, of the ornamental façade of our house, or even of the advantages of the neighbourhood in which we live, so the bird may feel a pride in the striking or sensuous pleasing object, that is akin to self-exhibition.
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These thoughts are merely thrown out, not as serious statements, nor even as hypotheses, but rather as half-playful speculation as to what may be going on in the bird's mind, and may be taken for what they are worth. However, it remains true that our point of departure, namely, the delight in what is bright or gay, is very remarkable, is a mental capability bringing the animal that possesses it into line with primitive man at this one point, when the development of his other faculties lags far behind. Their case is like that of one of those astonishing, and at the same time stupid, mathematical geniuses, whose mental capacity is inferior to that of the average man in all directions save one, while his ability to grasp and manipulate series of numbers is something phenomenal. But we must bear in mind that such phenomena may after all be explained on grounds of practical utility; and if thus explained they have no place in the psychology of play.
6. Nursing Plays.
During the time that I spent in study preparatory to writing this book I naturally became much interested in human play as well, and although my classification of animal play has not to my knowledge been influenced by any system of human play, I confess that I am now confronted by a problem that would not have been likely to attract my attention if I had not seen children at play. We all know how much of that is with dolls. and the question for us now is whether theme is anything analogous to it in the animal world. Of course, an animal in its natural condition can never be the possessor of a doll—that is, a plastic representation of an individual of its own kind—and even if one were given him
(168) he would not know how to play with it. Romanes relates of the same ape that his sister so admirably described: " I bought at a toyshop a very good imitation of a monkey and brought it into the room with the real monkey, stroking and speaking to it as if it were alive. The monkey evidently mistook the figure for a real animal, manifesting intense curiosity, mixed with much alarm if I made the figure approach him. Even when I placed the figure on the table and left it standing motionless the monkey was afraid to approach it."[118]
My St. Bernard displayed feelings of curiosity mingled with fear when I held an imitation white poodle before him, and as I made the figure bark his astonishment recalled Schiller's verse on the power of song:
" Amazed, and with delicious fear
He heard the minstrel's lay, and hid."
There was no sign of a wish to play with the doll. But this does not dispose of the subject. Real dolls are not the only thing that children play with. Little girls often prefer some make-believe, a comb, a fork, a stone, a bit of bread, anything they happen to fancy they will tenderly nurse, feed, put to bed, and discipline. And when we reflect that a dog treats a scrap of wood as his prey, we can not regard as a priori out of the question for the animal's fostering instinct to fix on an object of the same kind. But while I admit this as an a priori possibility, I confess that I am unable to find an a posteriori experimental proof. The only cases that would serve in this connection that have come under my observation are in the report of the Loango Expedition. There Pechuël-Loesche says: " It
(169) was something entirely new to me to see the monkeys take lifeless objects for playthings, and, like children, carefully put them to bed in their own sleeping boxes, as well as care for them during the day. Isabella devoted herself for a long time to a little canister, and Pavy to a little crooked stick of wood which in his wild capers he often hurled into the air. Once it flew too far and was appropriated by Jack, and thereupon deadly enmity ensued. As their chains were not long enough for them to reach one another, there was nothing for them to do but get as near together as possible and make horrible faces while they scolded. Their mutual hatred continued until I gave Pavy back his stick. Later he took to petting a musket ball, while Jack conceived a passion for a thermometer. As soon as he was free and not watched, he hurried to it and carried it off. He evidently delighted in the shining glass, but handled it so carefully that the instrument was never injured, even when he took it up in trees and on the roof and had to be coaxed down."[119]
It is questionable whether there is any analogy to play with dolls in such actions. At most, the putting things to bed and the care taken of the thermometer are all that could be considered so; but so long as better examples are wanting, these carry very little conviction.
But there is another and more important phase of the subject. When we see little girls playing foster mother to their younger brothers and sisters, and even to grown ones, and when we see, too, how lonely women lavish maternal care on lapdogs, which is really playing, we are not surprised at something of the same kind
(170) among animals. Among the innumerable examples of the adoption of foster children and of animal friends, there are many that suggest play. I think, however, that those cases should be excepted where the mother, being robbed of her own young, has the young of some other animal thrust upon her by some experimenteryoung which she regards with surprise but without a clear understanding of the deception.
We can as little speak of play in such a case as in that of a hen that tries to hatch marble eggs that have been placed under her. But there are still many cases that are like human play, and I will cite several such examples. The fact that the animal adopted is often maltreated and even in danger of its life does not argue against the playful intention. ' We see little girls frequently become very careless with their tenderly nurtured doll babies; we see them in the midst of maternal cares for an eatable toy make nothing of biting its head off; and we see the instinct of experimentation and destruction many times indulged even at the peril of their tame pets or little brother or sister, in spite of all the love for them.
Herr E. Duncker, of Berlin, observed, according to Büchner's report, a dog on a farm in Pyrmont, whose duty it was to watch the stock, and especially the poultry. He used to hunt up hidden eggs and bring them to the kitchen.[120] " One day he placed an egg on the sofa in the kitchen instead of on the stone floor, as usual. The little ehiek imprisoned in it was trying to break the shell, and after the egg was placed in a wadded
(171) basket the dog helped it out with his tongue and constituted himself its nurse. He let the chicken drink from the end of his tongue dipped in water, placed the basket in the sun, and petted and tended the little creature with unwearying care. When it grew up and was badly used by the other fowls he played protector, and the hen would fly on his back and appear to caress him."
Herr Wilibald Wulff relates that on a visit to the family of a friend in Schleswig he came upon a terrier lying in a basket holding two kittens with his fore paws, while two more clambered on his back. The lady of the house said, in answer to his questions, that he did this many times in a day—so often, indeed, that the old cat had deserted her young. He was far more careful of them than the mother herself, and would not allow any one to disturb the little ones. Dr. Matthes brought home a very young and helpless puppy, and noticed the next day that it had already been taken in charge by an old male dog. He lay down by the whining puppy, licked it, and growled at any one who came near. The following is related of a shepherd dog by Herr Heinrich Richter: " This remarkable and valuable dog had the habit that is common among good shepherd dogs of biting lightly the hind leg, just below the hock, of straying sheep. But he omitted to do this to one of the sheep, and only barked. Even at the command of the shepherd he refused to bite the sheep and only barked the more anal licked it so that it became very bold, and allowed itself more freedom than ever. But woe to any other sheep who was emboldened by its example! He bit them all the more and punished them severely, as if to make up for his laxity in the other case. It was at last necessary to take away the
(172) favourite in order to prevent trouble, but even this was only a temporary remedy, for the dog turned his affection toward another sheep and acted as before." The owner of a truck farm, says the Revue d'Anthropologie, noticed that a basket which he had filled with carrots was unaccountably empty. The gardener, when questioned, knew nothing about it, and proposed hiding behind a lattice to watch for the thief. They did so, after refilling the basket. Soon a sound put them on their guard, and they saw the house dog take a carrot in his mouth and slink off toward the stable. Dogs do not eat raw carrots, so our watchers followed the rogue and discovered that he was taking the carrots to a horse in whose stall he was in the habit of sleeping. Wagging his tail, he presented his prize, and the horse naturally needed little urging to accept it. The angry gardener reached for a stick with which to punish the too zealous friend, but his master restrained him, and the scene was repeated until the supply of carrots was exhausted. This horse was evidently the dog's chosen favourite, for he scarcely noticed the other one that lived in the same stall, not to speak of giving him carrots. Fraulein Fanny Bezold, of Heidingsfeld, had a shaggy terrier named " Schnauz " that one day brought home a rabbit that he had caught at a farm about half a mile distant, and devoted himself to it. He played with his pet and defended it from the attacks of other animals and watched it anxiously when the children of the neighhourhood camp in to see it. Herr Otmar Wild, in Zittau, writes to Buchner about the friendship between his setter one year old and a pullet. They sleep side by side, or the hen on the dog's back. He expresses his tenderness by licking his little friend, and she shows her appreciation of it by picking about in his hair.
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Many similar instances are recorded, tending to show that while this instinct is strongest in the female, it is not wanting in male animals, and that even among the fiercest animals the male assists in caring for and rearing the young.
Recorded examples are naturally most abundant among domestic animals. Mr. Oswald Fitch writes of a house cat: " It was observed to take some fish bones from the house to the garden and, being followed, was seen to have placed them in front of a miserably thin and evidently hungry stranger cat, who was devouring them; not satisfied with that, our cat returned, procured a fresh supply, and repeated its charitable offer, which was apparently as thankfully accepted. This act of benevolence over, our cat returned to its accustomed dining place, the scullery, and ate its own dinner off the remainder of the bones."[121]
If the playful character of this action seems doubtful, it is certainly present in Büchner's narrative which follows: At the mill near Hildburghausen there was a cat that rejoiced in the name of "Lies." She extended her maternal care not only to little chickens, but to young ducks and other birds as well. Once, immediately before the birth of four kittens, she brought six chicks, just hatched, to the basket prepared for her. She had some trouble in keeping the restless brood together, especially when her kittens came—in three days—but she never relaxed her care for the foster children. On the contrary, she soon brought to the nest three young ducks and a little red wagtail which she took from a nest near by. Her loving care was bestowed impar-
(174) -tially on the motley crowd of nurslings, and she goodnaturedly allowed the little chicks to peck at her nose and eyes. When they grew larger and ran about, they gave their foster mother endless trouble to bring them back and keep them safe, and by their constant pecking they made her neck quite bare. Fräulein Johanna Baltz, of Arnsberg, saw a large cat in the house of a friend acting as the protector of five little chickens, whose mother had been lost. The cat warmed and protected the tiny creatures when she first saw them, and it was a beautiful picture to see the cunning little heads, with their bright eyes peering out from under the gray fur.
Brehm has a great deal to say about this kind of play among monkeys. An orang-utang that Cuvier used to watch in Paris won the affection of two little kittens, which he often held under his arm or set on his head, although their sharp clinging claws must have hurt him. Once he examined their paws and tried to pull out the claws with his fingers. He did not succeed in this, but preferred to bear the pain rather than give up playing with his pets. A baboon named " Perro," that belonged to L. Brehm, brother of the author of Thierleben, showed a strong partiality for young animals of all sorts. " When we were going to Alexandria we had him chained to the baggage wagon, giving him a long enough leash to do anything he wanted, short of running away. As we entered the city Perro spied a bitch lying in her kennel near the street and peacefully suckling four beautiful pups. To spring from the wagon and snatch one of the sucklings from its mother was the work of a moment, but regaining his place was another matter. The dog, enraged by the monkey's audacity, flew at him madly, and Perro had to exert all his strength' to withstand her attack.
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The wagon moved steadily onward, and he had none too much time to clamber in it when she sprang upon him. Holding the puppy between his upper arm and breast, and seizing the chain which impeded him with the same hand, he ran on his hind legs and defended himself bravely with one arm. His courageous defence won the admiration of the Arabs to such a degree that no one attempted to take the stolen puppy from him, and they finally drove the mother away. Unmolested, he brought the puppy with him to our stopping place, fondled it, nursed it, and cared for it tenderly, leaped over walls and rafters with the poor little creature, which seemed to have no taste for such exercises, left it in perilous places, and gave it privileges which might have been appreciated by young monkeys but were not agreeable to a dog. He was very fond of the little thing, but that did not hinder his eating all the food we brought it, actually holding it back while he robbed his innocent ward. I took the puppy away from him and sent it back to its mother that same evening." Another baboon that Brehm had behaved in the same way. " Atile loved pets of all kinds. Hassan, a long-tailed monkey, was the darling of her heart, so long as there was no question of eating. It seemed perfectly natural to her and no cause for gratitude that Hassan should share everything with her. She required slavish obedience of him, struck him on the mouth and emptied his plate without hesitation if he dared to think of enjoying anything alone. Her large heart was not satisfied witb one pet, her love wag all-embracing. She stole puppies and kittens whenever opportunity offered, and kept them for a long time. And she knew well how to render them harmless, for if they scratched her she would bite off their sharp claws."
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" An interesting quality of our tame monkey," says Pechuël-Loesche, " is the way he has of choosing a particular animal, or even an inanimate thing, as the special object of his care. Strange friendships result from it. It is a familiar fact that apes often adopt the children of others of their own kind, care for them tenderly, and protect them to the last extremity. When our shepherd dog `Trine' came home with her little ones, tormented by fleas, we placed them in the monkey house, where they were joyfully received and thoroughly cleansed, while the old dog looked on contentedly from outside. But a great commotion was raised when we attempted to take away the new pets, the monkeys evidently expecting to keep them. The good-natured ape Mohr formed a triple alliance with the gorilla and the ram Mfuka. Jack, the baboon, had a little pig for his friend, and often attempted to ride on its back. Later, in place of the cheerful pig, he had a half-grown dog for his chum, and they played together in the drollest manner. The morose Isabella chose a gray parrot for her pet, but the friendship was broken from the day she tried to pull out the parrot's beautiful tail feathers."
We will conclude with some examples from birds. " A friend of mine," says Wood, "has a gray parrot that is the tenderest and most devoted of foster mothers to any helpless little creatures. In the garden were a number of rosebushes surrounded by a wire fence thickly covered with vines. A pair of finches nested here, and were fed regularly by the people in the house, who were kindly disposed to all animals. Polly noticed these frequent visits to the rose garden, and the food scattered there, and determined to follow so good an example. Watching his chance, he escaped from the
(177) cage, imitated the call of the old finches, and carried to one after another of the young birds a bill full of his own food. But his manner was a little too brusque to snit the old birds, and they flew away in terror from the great gray stranger. Polly thus saw to his satisfaction the little ones orphaned and left entirely to his protecting care. From that time he refused to return to his cage, staying night and day with the foster children, and feeding them carefully till they were grown up. The little creatures would fly about and perch on his head and neck, and Polly would move very carefully and seriously with his burden." The naturalist Pietruvsky had a pond raven that always insisted on having company after a magpie was once accidentally placed in his cage. This companionship must have given him pleasure, for the next winter he chased any of the birds that came near when he was out of his cage. Tiring of the sport, he would catch a magpie and hold it in his claws, calling out until his attendant appeared, to put it in the cage. If the man dared to free the bird, the raven would keep on chasing magpies until he had his way; that accomplished, he would go into the cage of his own accord and there torment his beloved magpie, very much as monkeys tease their pets." [122]
Some birds that are reared with the first brood assist their parents in bringing up the second. " A family of swallows did this. Toussenel saw the first brood when they had hardly outgrown the nest themselves, lend a helping hand in feeding their little brothers, and sister." [123]
Altum assures us that the second brood of canary
(178) birds is often fed by the first, and he has seen young kildees still in their first feathers bringing food to young cuckoos.[124]
If we now glance backward over the examples cited, it will be seen that the majority of them refer to abnormal conditions, like those in which the weaver bird displayed its skill. Most of the animals concerned had lost their own young and were trying to find an outlet for the fostering instincts already cited, and so a kind of make-believe was substituted for the natural expression of it, hence the origin of play. This is not quite the case when the animal adds strangers to its flourishing family, but it may be questioned even then whether the strange habit did not originate on some occasion when the animal could not exert its normal function. Yet I suppose those who regard the petting of dogs by lonely women as play may call this so too.
Play characteristics are, however, unmistakably present when experimentation and the desire for ownership are combined with the fostering instinct, and also when half-grown birds assist in caring for the younger ones. This latter seems to me the veritable play of young creatures, in which, however, imitation is perhaps as much involved as the nurturing instinct. It is certainly so in human play of this kind.[125]
7. Imitative Play.
I have already stated, in the previous chapter, that I subscribe to the views of those who, like Scheitlin, Schneider, Stricker, Wundt, and James, regard the imi-
(179) -tative impulse as instinctive, and now I must return to this vexed question. In order to get a clear view of the opposite theory, according to which imitation is of individual (not hereditary) origin, it is best to refer at once to the work which more than any other has influenced modern association psychology—James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind. So far as I can see there is nothing essential in later elucidations that is not contained in Chapter XXIV of this book. Mill proceeds from the assumption that the idea of a movement produces the impulse to perform the movement itself. The motion of swallowing furnishes a good example, for " if a friend assures you that you can not refrain for the space of a minute from this act, and you are tempted to try, you are almost sure to fail." Why is this true? Because directing the attention to the act of swallowing so strongly suggests the muscular feeling attending the act, that swallowing itself follows of its own accord. The same result follows when an idea of motion is suggested by the sight of it performed by another. For instance, there are certain feelings which we hardly notice accompanying gaping, and when we see another person gaping, we usually gape too; the act is so firmly associated with the accompanying feeling that the sight of the action arouses the feeling, which in turn calls for the act in ourselves. This explanation is expected to cover all phenomena included in the general name of imitation. It will be seen that the awakening of imitative impulse is here dependent on antecedent association. But for this it is necessary, as a rule, that the act in question shall have Been repeated frequently, and thus, according to this theory, we would imitate only such motions as are already familiar. Were the
(180) associative connection between the "antecedent state of feeling " and the act itself firmly established by frequent repetition, the force of imitation would not be operative.
Against this definition the just and obvious objection is that imitation preferably selects what is new and unusual for its model, as the phenomena of fashion illustrate daily. When we see two people greet one another in the manner that we are accustomed to, we are not impelled to imitate them, though the associative connection is perfect. But if a leader of fashion displays a new way of lifting his hat, there are hundreds who can not resist the temptation to hold their hats, too, like warming pans, before them, or doing whatever the new mode demands. Further, this theory would make imitation a much stronger impulse in adults, whose associations are established, than in children, while the contrary is the fact. Nor does it explain any better the powerful influence of imitation in teaching the child new and unpractised movements of the limbs and vocal organs. Thus, when James Mill says" All men have a greater or less propensity for imitation. This propensity is very strong in most children, and to it is due in large measure the rapidity with which they acquire many things, for example, the propensity to imitate sounds helps them to learn to talk quickly . . . . Children learn to stammer and to squint by imitating their companions, and we all know how common it is for young people to adopt the manners and expression of those with whom they associate " he seems to me to prove by his own illustration that the exercise of imitative impulse does not use tracts learned by association, but rather inborn ones; in other words, that it is not acquired but inherited; it is an instinct. This is Her-
(181) -bert Spencer's view as it is set forth in the chapter on " Sociality and Sympathy " of his Principles of Psychology. He begins, it is true, with a purely associative principle in seeking to show how all the members of a herd of cattle often take to flight simultaneously, and how through the frequent repetition of this a strong association is gradually established between the signs of fright in another and the consciousness of fear, so that finally when only one animal perceives the danger, his fright is communicated to all the others. From this he goes on: " Evidently the process thus imitated must, by inheritance of the effects of habit, furthered by survival of the fittest, render organic a quick and complete sympathy of this simple kind. Eventually a mere hearing of the sound of alarm peculiar to the species will by itself arouse the emotion of alarm. For the meaning of this sound becomes known, not only in the way pointed out, but in another way. Each is conscious of the sound made by itself when in fear, and the hearing of a like sound, tending to recall the sound made by itself, tends to arouse the accompanying feeling. Hence the panics so conspicuous among gregarious creatures. Motions alone often suffice. A flock of birds, toward which a man approaches, will quietly watch for a while, but when one flies, those near it, excited by its movement of escape, fly also, and in a moment the rest are in the air. The same happens with sheep. Long they stand stupidly gazing, but when one runs all run, and so strong is the sympathetic tendency among them that they will usually go through the same movement at the same spot, leaping when there is nothing to leap over."[126]
(182) I agree with Spencer in considering the imitative impulse hereditary, but must demur from his assumption of the inheritance of acquired characters, and take instead the principle of survival of the fittest, or selection, as the proper ground for a definition. In order to establish this connection, however, it must first be proved that imitation is useful, as I tried to do when I took the ground that it is an instinct which works directly toward the development of intelligence, since its tendency is to render many other instincts to a certain degree superfluous, and so encourage independence in the individual. This view is borne out by the fact that imitation is strongest in the more intelligent animals, such as highly developed birds and monkeys, and that man may be called the imitative animal par excellence.
Before I proceed to give instances of imitative play, it is necessary to point out briefly that this instinct is not by any means peculiar to gregarious animals, as seems to be the common impression. It is more or less operative in all the higher animals, especially while they are young. The family as well as the herd offers opportunity for its exercise, and we find examples of
(183) it among many animals that do not live in companies, as the instances which follow will show.
But when, it will be asked, can imitation be called play? Remembering our definition of play as instinctive activity exerted for purposes of practice or exercise, and without serious intent, it is easy to discriminate between imitation that is playful and imitation that is earnest. When a crow flies away with a warning cry, and the whole flock follows him, play has nothing to do with it. And the same is true of the beautiful instance given in Nature, September 12, 1889: " Two cats were on a roof, from which it was necessary to jump. Tom made the spring, but Tabby's courage failed and she drew back with a cry of distress, whereupon Tom leaped back, and, giving a cheerful mew as much as to say, `See how easy it is,' jumped across again, followed this time by Tabby." But imitation appears in the character of play when young animals imitate the movements of their parents or other animals with no apparent aim but practice, when parrots reproduce every possible noise and tone, when monkeys copy their masters, and when animals have large gatherings for the purpose of competing with one another. Sully holds [127] that the imitative impulse is brought out only by such movements as are connected with " pleasurable interest "; but where movements of flight from approaching danger are concerned this can not invariably be true. Playful imitation, however, must always be connected with " pleasurable interest," and indeed it seems probable that such feelings of pleasure rest On the basis common to all play, which a searching examination will discover to be experimentation in this case, as
(184) well as in the others that we have considered. The delight in being able to say " I can," which we found in simple experimentation, becomes the joy of " I can too " in playful imitation, and under favourable conditions goes on to the pleasure of " I can do better " in rivalry.
Since playful imitation is often stigmatized as mimicry (Nachäffen), it seems peculiarly appropriate to begin with an example from the monkeys (Affen). The ancients were familiar with the imitativeness of monkeys, as their designations of them prove—the Greek mimw being one who imitates, and the Latin simius sounding much like similis.
The Egyptian word for monkey, though signifying rather the baboon in particular—an, anin, anan — likewise signifies imitator.[128] During the later Greek and Roman Empires monkeys were favourite pets because of their drollery. Their natural propensity was cultivated by teaching them all sorts of tricks, such as dancing, riding, driving a coach, playing the flute and the lyre. Aelian relates that monkeys had been known to scald little children in mistaken imitation of the nurse. According to Philostratus, who, it must be admitted, is not always trustworthy, the Indians employed monkeys in harvesting pepper. " They collected a small quantity of the fruit in a place prepared for it under a tree or at the foot of a hill, and then tossed it away as if worthless. The monkeys who attentively watched this proceeding came back at nightfall and, obeying their imitative impulse, made collections as the men had and left them. Next morning the Indiam came and carried away the pepper thus harvested for them."[129]
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The probability of this story is indeed not enhanced when we learn that the method of catching the monkeys familiar to readers of Speckter's story book, namely, that of drawing on boots in their presence and then leaving the boots as a trap, was known to the ancients; but all such tales go to prove how impressive the monkey's imitativeness is. Modern accounts, too, are chiefly taken up with mimicry of human actions. Fr. Ellendorf relates a good example of curiosity, imitation, and experimentation combined in the person of a little black ape with a white head that he brought from Costa Rica. " On the first day that I let him run about in the sitting room, he sat before me on the table and eagerly examined everything there. Pretty soon he came upon a little matchbox and soon had it open and the contents scattered about on the table. I took a match, rubbed it on the box cover and held it near him. Full of astonishment, he rolled his little eves and gazed at the clear flame. I struck a second and a third and held them out to him. At last he stretched out his paw, hesitatingly took the match, held it before his face, and watched the flame admiringly. Suddenly it touched his finger and he instantly threw the match away. I closed the box and placed it before me. From his hasty manner I thought he would open it at once, but he did not. He went near it, looked and smelt all about it without taking hold of it, then he came to me, making a low pleading sound and clinging to me. ac if he were fall of wonder find wanted to ask Miat this could be. Then he returned to the box, handled it all over and tried to open it, but could not do it alone, and came back to me with the same pleading tone. I struck another match on the cover and gave it to him when it was burned out. Then he took
(186) one and rubbed it on the cover and threw it away, but soon returned to it and, getting hold of it upside down, rubbed the wrong end. I turned it for him, and lie struck it till it lighted. Now he was himself again, his whole manner showed the greatest joy and complaisance. He grasped the matches and struck at least a dozen"[130]
H. Leutemann contributes this about an orang-outang : " Most monkeys try to chew up whatever they can get at, and seem to take pleasure only (?) in destroying things, but ours, on the contrary, evidently tried to put to its proper use whatever was given to him. To my great surprise, he attempted to put on a pair of gloves, and, although he could not tell right from left, it proved that he knew what they were for. He supported himself on a light walking cane, and when it bent under him, made ridiculous motions to right it again."[131] Brehm tells of a chimpanzee: " After eating he at once begins to clean up. He holds a stick of wood in front of him or puts his hands in his master's slippers and slides about the room, then takes a cloth and scrubs the floor. Scouring, sweeping, and dusting are his favourite occupations, and when he once gets hold of the cloth he never wants to give it up."
The gorilla of which J. Falkenstein has given a detailed description was remarkable for his delicacy in eating: " He would take up a cup or glass with the greatest care, using both hands to carry it to his mouth, and set it down so carefully that I do not recall having lost a single piece of crockery through him, though we had never tried to teach him the use of such vessels,
(187) wishing to bring him to Europe as nearly as possible in his natural condition."[132]
Romanes's sister has the following about the capucine ape already mentioned: " To-day he broke his chain . . . and got to the trunk where the nuts are kept, . . . and began picking at the lock with his fingers. I then gave him the key, and he tried for two full hours, without ceasing, to unlock the trunk. It was a very difficult lock to open, being slightly out of order, and requires the lid of the trunk to be pressed down before it would work, so I believe it was absolutely impossible for him to open it, but he found in time the right way to put the key in, and to turn it backward and forward, and after every attempt he pulled the lid upward to see if it were locked. That this was the result of observing people is obvious from the fact that after every time he put the key into the lock and failed to open the trunk, he passed the key round and round the outside of the lock several times. The explanation of this is that my mother's sight being bad, she often misses the lock in putting in the key; the monkey therefore evidently seems to think that this feeling round and round the lock with the key is in some way necessary to success in unlocking the lock, so that, although he could see perfectly well. how to put the key in straight himself, he went through this useless operation first." [133]Similar observations were made with two dogs, though imitation is nowhere so strong as with monkeys. Scheitlin describes his poodle's effort ; at mimicry, which are in keeping with his remarkable intelligence. " He watches his master constantly, always no
(188) ticing what he does; always ready to serve him, he is the right kind of eye-servant. If his master takes up a ninepin ball, he seizes one between his paws, gnaws at it, and is evidently annoyed that he can not take it up too. When his master looks for geological specimens, he hunts stones too, and digs with his paws when he sees digging going on. The master sits at a window admiring the view, the dog springs up on the bench near by, lays his paws on the window sill, and gazes, though not absorbedly, at the beauties of the scene. He always wants to carry a stick or basket when he sees his master or the cook carry one."[134]
There is probably something of playful imitation, too, in the howling of dogs when they hear music, for the dog which, for instance, accompanies the piano with mournful wails is often not compelled to listen to the music, but comes into the room voluntarily. I have said that I am doubtful whether the howling of dogs is always a sign of distress, and I am almost sure that it frequently is not when they howl to music; on the contrary, they seem to take pleasure in it. Moreover, there are cases on record where a rude attempt to imitate the music is apparent, though it is very easy to be mistaken about that. A friend of mine had, when he was a student, a female poodle named Rolla, with which he often gave performances for the entertainment of his friends. When he sang in a high falsetto voice the dog accompanied him with howls that unmistakably adapted themselves to the pitch of the notes. While there was, of
(189) course, no such thing as following the tune, the impression was made on the hearer that the dog tried to sing with it, and was very proud of her skill. I should hesitate to relate this if others had not advanced the same belief. Scheitlin thinks that music may be painful to the dog, but goes on: " It may be questioned whether he does not, in his way, accompany it."[135] Romanes says the same thing: " With the exception of the singing ape (Hylobates agilis) there is no evidence of any mammal other than man having any delicate perception of pitch. I have, however, heard a terrier, which used to accompany a song by howling, follow the prolonged notes of the human voice with some approximation to unison; and Dr. Huggins, who has a good ear, tells me that his large mastiff, Kepler, used to do the same to prolonged notes sounded from an organ." [136]
Still more positive are some of the examples given by Alix; they really seem to border on the marvellous. " Père Pardies cites the case of two dogs that had been taught to sing, one of them taking a part with his master. Pierquin de Gembloux also speaks of a poodle that could run the scale in tune and sing very agreeably a fine composition of Mozart's (My Heart it sighs at Eve, etc.). It was called Capucin, and belonged to Habeneck, a theatrical director. All the scientists in Paris, according to the same authority, went to see the dog belonging to Dr. Bennati, and hear it sing the scale, which it could do perfectly. I myself know a poodle that accompanies his mistress very well when she plays the scale on the piano.''[137] Alix cites Leibnitz, too, who had seen a dog with such a capacity for imitation that he
(190) could pronounce more than thirty words, making suitable answers to his master, and articulate clearly all the letters of the alphabet except M, N, and H.
The examples cited so far do not show us imitation in its real meaning; they are all the result of accidental offshoots from this powerful instinct, for the actual biological significance of imitative play is not expressed in movements or sounds that are unconnected with the struggle for life, but rather, to put it briefly, in playful self-discipline of young animals in the life habits of their kind. It is sometimes very difficult to place the boundary between what is instinctive or hereditary and what is acquired by imitation. Still, it can hardly be questioned, after all that has been said, that imitative plays are an important adjunct to heredity during the youth of higher animals. The qualities of animals brought up by foster parents furnish a strong experimental proof of this. However the adopted animal may be limited in his development by inherited instinct, imitative impulse is still strong enough to bring about some startling modifications. I have not been able to collect many examples illustrative of this in mammals, the class to which I have hitherto confined myself.
Darwin tells us that " two species of wolves, which had been reared by dogs, learned to bark, as does sometimes the jackal,"[138] and it seems quite certain that dogs brought up by cats learn many things from their foster parents. " From one account which I have read there is reason to believe that puppies nursed by cats sometimes learn to lick their feet, and thus to clean their faces; it is at least certain, as I hear from a perfectly trustworthy friend, that some dogs behave in
(191) this manner."[139] Many such cases could be cited; indeed, Romanes found among Darwin's papers a manuscript of the late Professor Hoffmann, of Giessen, containing one.[140] But it is also a fact that dogs which have not been brought up with cats often have the habit of licking their paws and rubbing them over the face and ears, but no doubt the motions of the dogs in the other cases were noticeably like those of a cat. Imitation was more clearly displayed, however, by a King Charles spaniel mentioned in Miss Mitford's Life and Letters. This dog was suckled by a cat in its infancy at the home of Dr. Routh. He grew up with the horror of rain so characteristic of cats, and would not put his paw in a wet place; he would watch a mouse hole, too, for hours.[141] A certain Mr. Jeens also had a dog nursed by a cat, and it played with a mouse just as a cat does"[142]
Leaving such abnormal cases, I now pass on to consider the natural workings of this instinct. Every time a young animal imitates the movements of its elders without any aim beyond the unconscious one of practice, playful activity is indulged in. For example, I will relate what I have seen young polar bears do. There is a large flat stone in the bear pit, and the mother is constantly shoving it backward and forward. On one occasion it lay directly in her way, and she stepped over it, and the little one that was behind her, though he seldom cared to follow his mother about, tried to clamber over it too, and accomplished it —with some difficulty. Brehm says that the only way he could get the young
(192) bears of the Hamburg gardens inside the inclosure of the bath was to run in himself, whereupon they all followed at once, otherwise their interest was absorbed by all sorts of things on the way.[143] This impulse to imitate motion may appear before the animal is able to distinguish between its mother and other objects, but simply follows anything that attracts its attention by moving—a clear proof that the impulse is hereditary. Hudson relates of young lambs that probably develop more slowly on account of domestication: " Its next important instinct (after sucking) which comes into play from the moment it can stand on its feet, impels it to follow after any object receding from it, and, on the other hand, to run from anything approaching it. If the dam turns round and approaches it, even from a very short distance, it will start back and run from her in fear, and will not understand her voice when she bleats to it. At the same time it will confidently follow after a man, horse, dog, or any other animal moving from it . . . . I have seen a lamb about two days old start up from sleep and immediately start off in pursuit of a puffball about as big as a man's head, carried past it over the smooth turf by the wind, and chase it for a distance of five hundred yards, until the dry ball was brought to a stop by a tuft of coarse grass. This blundering instinct is quickly laid aside when the lamb has learned to distinguish its dam from other objects, and its dam's voice from other sounds."[144] We often see among rings how, when one goes over a ditch, his companions follow, and how the bark of one excites the rest at once. Wesley Mills emphasizes the
(193) extraordinary importance of imitation in development. He mentions the case of a mongrel dog that was placed with some St. Bernards when only twenty days old, and says: " One of the features of development greatly impressed on my mind . . . was the influence o f one on another in all the lines of development. This was shown both negatively and positively in the case of the mongrel. After he began to mingle with the older dogs his progress was marvellous. He seemed in a few days to overtake himself, so to speak, and his advancement was literally by leaps and bounds."[145] The propensity of young bears to imitate their elders is often taken advantage of by tamers. Brehm gives an interesting description by Ii. Müller of the education of young stone martens: " The mother is most attentive to the exercising of her young, as I have had occasion to notice several times. In the park a wall five metres high is connected with the shed where a pair of martens with four young ones are housed. At daybreak the mother crept out cautiously, stealing like a cat some distance along the wall and crouched there, quietly waiting. There the father joined her, but it was some moments before the young ones came out. When they were all together the parents rose and in five or six bounds covered a considerable stretch of the wall and vanished, and I heard, though it was scarcely audible, the sound of a spring into the garden. The little ones followed with hurried leaps and climbed up on the wall with the aid of a poplar tree growing near. Hardly had they reached their parents when the latter sprang away again, this time to a lilac bush, and now the young ones followed them without hesitation. It was aston
(194) -ishing how by a hasty glance they could detect the best route. And now began the running and leaping with such zeal and at such a breakneck speed that the play of cats and foxes seemed mere child's play beside it. With every moment the pupils grew more agile, rushing up and down trees, over roofs and walls with a rapidity that proved how necessary it was for the birds of the garden to be on their guard."
Turning now to birds, I begin where we left the four-footed animals, for among the former imitation of parents is much more the rule than among mammals, and especially so with singing birds. I should like to call attention, in this connection, to the position of Wallace, who, though he found that the facts did not bear him out in the attempt to refer everything to imitation, has still given us some valuable reflections on its pedagogical aspects. There are cases on record of birds which have been reared apart from any of their species and never learned their characteristic song perfectly, while on the strength of other observations it seems just as certain that instinct alone is sufficient to teach them not only simple calls, but genuine song. Romanes's conclusion seems to be the right one—namely, that song and the other general capacities of birds are instinctive, but can never be so quickly nor so perfectly expressed as when the parents serve as models.[146] That the value of imitation is not to be despised is seen in the many cases where young birds are brought up by some other kind, whose song they adopt, showing that their imitative impulse is stronger than the hereditary disposition to the song of their own kind. We are again in-
(195) -debted to Weinland's diary for the records of a family of canaries. On May 14, 1861, the shells were broken. One bird with a black head was the strongest and most active of the brood. On June 2d little Black-head sang for the first time, or rather he twittered while his father sang. This is a good example of playful imitation.[147]
In Thüringia chaffinches are bred that have a specially acquired song, no one knows why, probably through unconscious selection. If young ones are reared near those having the special song, they catch the note in their play.[148]
The many cases, too, where the female imperfectly imitates the song of the male may be playful. Then there is the well-known tendency of song birds to make themselves heard when another is singing, when a piano is being played, or conversation carried on. Imitation here becomes rivalry.
But imitation is not confined to singing in young birds. " They are like little monkeys," says Hermann Müller; " example always excites them. When one little one, whose wings are feathered or not, as the case may be, begins to flutter, all the little wings are agitated." This observation seems to prove that it is not individual experience alone that causes a flock of grown birds to take flight simultaneously.[149] I have already pointed out that young chickens take twice as long to learn to walk alone as when they have the maternal example before them, and that waterfowls go into the water with their young and swim before them. Darwin says, in his manuscript left unpublished: " It might have been
(196) thought that the manner in which fowls drink, by filling their beaks, lifting up their heads, and allowing the water to run down by its gravity, would have been specially taught by instinct; but this is not so, for I was most positively assured that the chickens of a brood reared by themselves generally required their beaks to be pressed into a trough, but if there were older chickens present, who had learned to drink, the younger ones imitated their movements, and thus acquired the art."[150]
It is probable that the imitative impulse comes into play in similar fashion many times in an animal's life, when we are entirely unable to prove its presence or influence.
The imitation by birds of the songs of other species is very common. It would be an endless task to cite even a portion of such descriptions as are found, for example, in the works of Naumann, Beckstein, Russ, the two Brehms, the Müllers, etc. I therefore confine myself to a choice among examples where the imitative impulse appears in greatest perfection, where not only bird voices but those of men, as well as sounds like the creaking of doors or a mill wheel, playing on pipes, and spoken words are faithfully copied. It should be noted that this strange habit is not peculiar to birds which lack a song of their own, [151] such as parrots and the crow family, but appears in good singers as well. The wild canary, which has a great talent for mimicking other
(197) birds,[152] when tamed can be taught to speak; and the American mocking bird, which Dr. Golz, of Berlin, a most competent judge, gives the precedence over all species of nightingales,[153] imitates everything conceivable, even to the creaking of a rusty hinge.[154] I think this is easy to explain: the singers have had their powers improved by practice in learning their complicated songs, and parrots and crows are endowed with unusual ability for speech, for which imitation is particularly essential. According to Karl Russ, these birds manifest a certain degree of comprehension of the meaning of words uttered by them, while other talking birds babble meaninglessly, or warble the words in song. I take a canary for our first example. Karl Russ says: " On the 23d of April, 1883, I called on the wife of Commissioner Gräber in Berlin to see and hear her little feathered talker. The lady received me with the warning that I had probably come in vain, for the bird did not seem inclined to talk that day. She told me that she had had him for about three years, and believed him to be quite young. From being a fine singer he suddenly stopped, probably as a result of moulting, and as his silence continued for some time she frequently said to him, `Sing doch, sing doch, mein Mätzehen, wie singst du? widewidewitt! ' `You can imagine my amazement,' she continued, `when the canary pronounced for the first time the words I had thus quite accidentally said
(198) to him. I hardly trusted my senses and could not understand it at first.' When the lady had told me this, she turned to the canary and repeated the same words. He began to twitter, and in the midst of his song we heard ` Widewidewitt ! wie singst du, mein Mätzchen? singe, singe Mätzchen, widewidewitt ! ' Again and again he repeated it, and the words became clearer and plainer. The bird did not articulate the words in human tones, but wove them into his song. The sound was always harmonious, and from the first one could understand the words, but they became more distinct as one listened."[155] Russ quotes the report of Mr. S. Leigh Lotheby, in the Proceedings of the Zoölogical Society of London for 1858. A canary bird was brought up by hand and his first song was very different from the characteristic one of his kind.[156] He was constantly talked to, and one day when he was about three months old he astonished his mistress by pronouncing after her the caressing words that she used to him, " Kissie, kissie," and then produced the smacking sound of a kiss. From time to time the little bird learned other words, and amused his friends by his manner of using them for hours at a time (except when moulting) in various combinations according to his fancy, and as clearly as the human voice can produce them: " Dear, sweet Fitchie, kiss Minnie, kiss me then, dear Minnie, sweet, pretty little Fitchie, kissie, kissie, kissie, dear Fitchie, Fitchie, wee, gee, gee, gee Fitchie, Fitchie." The habitual song of this bird was more like that of a nightingale, and the wound of a dog whistle used in the house was often heard in it. He also whis
(199) -tled very clearly the first strain of "God save the Queen."[157]
The European bullfinch, whose natural song the Thüringians call " rolling a wheelbarrow," though it has great variety, readily learns to whistle songs. The elder Brehm says of it: " I have heard the red linnet and the black thrush whistle many tunes not badly, but no other bird attains a purity, softness, and richness of tone equal to the bullfinch. It is incredible how far he can be trained. He often learns the melody of whole songs and produces them with such a flutelike tone that one never tires of hearing him." Herr Theodor Franck, of Berlin, writes that his bullfinch was quite a skilful whistler. " But the accomplishment that endeared him to us is his having learned to repeat the words that my wife and I address to him as he hangs in our chamber. ` Little man, are you there?' or ` Courage, Mannikin, courage."' The red linnet has a wonderful facility in imitating the songs of strange birds, as well as real melodies and discords. The crested lark sometimes learns as many as four different tunes, and mimics birds and animals as well.
Count Gourcy writes to the elder Brehm of the bunting of southern Europe: " Its call resembles, in all but one deep tone, the decoy cry of the crested lark. Its song is magnificent, and really extraordinary for its variety. It possesses the rare power of changing the quality of its voice at will, producing now high, shrill notes and then tones so clear as to astonish the hearer. Usually some strains of the nightingale's gong follow the first call, then comes the long-drawn, deep cry of the blackbird, in which the familiar `Tack, tack'
(200) is sounded very beautifully. After this follow strains that sometimes include the whole song of the chimney swallow, song thrush, quail, woodlark, linnet, field lark, and crested lark, the finch and sparrow, the laughter of woodpeckers, and shrieking of herons, all of which are produced in the natural tone."
" The paradise bird," says Alix, " has equally with the group of singing birds excellent imitative powers. I had one, writes Blythe, that mimicked the kittacincla macrowra so well that no one could distinguish their songs. I also owned another having the same power. There is no sound that it can not imitate. It crows so perfectly that cocks answer it, and it barks and mews quite as well, bleats like a goat or sheep, howls plaintively like a beaten cur, croaks like a crow, and sings the song of many birds."[158] The American mocking bird, which has been referred to as a splendid singer, has also a remarkable talent for mimicry. " In its native woods," says Brehm, " it mocks the wild birds; near human dwellings, it weaves into its song all sorts of sounds heard there. Crowing, cackling, quacking, mewing, barking, creaking of doors and weathervanes, the hum of a saw and rattle of a mill—all these and a hundred other noises are reproduced with the utmost faithfulness.".[159] European thrushes, too, have, Brehm says, a strong propensity to imitation, though they confine it more to their own kind. Yet the blackbird "mimics birds of strange species and sometimes becomes a veritable mocking bird."[160] According to
(201) Brehm, too, the stone thrush and blackbird are talking birds as well, though Russ questions this. Beckstein has shown by experiment that the stone thrush can be taught to whistle melodies. The natural song of the starling consists in complicated '` fluting, piping, twittering, and chuckling sounds."[161] But they copy the songs of other birds, cock crows, hen cackles, door creaking, etc., and have been known to attempt human speech. The older writers have no doubt exaggerated this capacity, but the following testimony will show how far the starling can be educated. K. Dittman writes of the learned starling owned by the master shoemaker G. Dom: " The bird learned with surprising ease to whistle the ` Call of the Fire Brigade' and other tunes. His name was Hans, and his master would call out often during a lesson, ` Careful, Hans, careful'; he quickly learned this and pronounced the words with perfect ease, proving his ability to talk as well as catch a tune. It was very comical to see him stand among the cobblers and call out, `Hurrah for Bismarck! ' or cry 'Pickpocket!' when any one came in the door." Another starling could say all the following: "Have you heard the news? My, but it's good! Good morning; are you up already? What do you know that's nice? How is the Kaiser getting on? And what's the matter with Bismarck? God bless you! Are you there? Take a seat; are you a fool? Yes, yes!"[162] But the Asiatic magpie is the most talented of all the starlings, and claims among its connections some of the very finest singers.[163]
Passing by many other imitative birds, I turn now to
(202) the ravens. Dickens's description of one in the preface to Barnaby Rudge is too familiar to need quoting for English and American readers.
Naumann's remark that ravens are more easily taught to speak than parrots is probably an exaggeration,[164] but it is undeniable that imitativeness has reached an extraordinary development in these birds. Chr. L. Brehm says of one: " His talent for mimicking every sound with his voice is remarkable. He laughs like the children, coos like the pigeons, barks like a dog, and talks like a man. His reproduction of certain tones is so deceptive that some of my friends, hearing him for the first time, could not be convinced that such sounds actually proceeded from a bird. `James, come here,` ` Rudolph, come in,' ` Don't you hear me, Christine?' and much more, he articulated perfectly and voluntarily, not because it was required of him. He picked up all these words, for no one ever took the least pains with him, but he could be heard trying new words every day, of those that he constantly heard around him."[165] The Millers, too, mention similar instances.[166]
But of all birds, parrots are the ones that manifest playful imitation most strongly. Their powers were well known as far back as the Romans, for Cato thunders against the luxuriousness of the jeunesse dorée of his time for flaunting in the streets with parrots on their thumbs; and courtiers under the emperors taught the birds the formula of greeting and gratulation to the
(203) Caesar. Kristan von Hamle, one of the lesser Thuringian minnesingers, expressed the wish in 1225:
" Oh, that the green grass too could speak
As doth the parrot in his cage! "
And Celius tells us that the parrot belonging to Cardinal Ascanius could recite the twelve
articles of faith.[167]
This highly developed impulse of imitation in the parrot is probably due to the unusual intricacy of their native language. Marshall says: " One must hear them when they do not know that they are observed, and when a pair chat together, to appreciate their fulness of tone and the variety of meaning they can convey in one of their long conversations." [168] To learn speech so complicated as this requires imitative power, and in this case it seems especially developed in the imitation of sounds. [169]
In selecting some examples to insert here I regret being obliged to omit a very remarkable one related by Brehm, In his battle for individual reason against instinct he became strangely credulous, and all his examples bearing on that topic are under the shadow of that imputation. The following collection, however, is vouched for as unimpeachable by Karl Russ, in his Feathered World. Of the wonderful gray parrot belonging to Director Kastner in Vienna it is said: " For a while after coming to us he spoke only when alone in the room, but soon took to chattering without noticing his surroundings, joining heartily in a laugh,
(204) too, on occasion. On hearing a low whistle, he said, 'Karo, where is Karo?' and himself whistled for the dog. He could whistle with rare skill a great variety of melodies, and reproduce any air perfectly. As soon as the dinner bell rang he called the waitress louder and louder until she appeared. If a knock came at the door, he said `Come in,' but was never deceived by any one in the room. If he saw preparation made for uncorking a bottle, he made the noise long before the cork was out. He talked to himself in soft, gentle tones, " You good, good Jacky,' etc., but would call out in a strong masculine voice, ` Turn out, guard! ' etc., and make the roll of a drum. He could count, and if he made a mistake or mispronounced a word he would go back and try it again till it was all right. When the green parrot standing near him screamed, he first tried to quiet her with a reproving ` Pst! ' but if that did not avail he called out in a loud voice, `Hush, hush, you!' He loved to talk to himself late in the evening, and regularly closed his monologue with the words, `Good night, good night, Jacky."[170]
Herr Ch. Schwendt says of his gray parrot: " My parrot is a living proof that one should never despair of teaching these birds to speak. I had to wait eight months before he brought out the word `Jacob,' but the ice once broken, I was richly rewarded for my patience; he learned something new almost every day, and now after four years he knows more than I can tell. There is hardly any expression commonly used in the family that he has not learned to repeat, and how well he knows how to apply them! He speaks of everybody in the house and all the animals by name, whistles to the
(205) dogs and orders them about, coaxes the cats or scolds them. He has the names of all the other birds at his tongue's end, and answers with the right one at the sound of their voices, never confusing them. He can alter his voice from the tenderest caressing tone to a gruff command, `Present arms! ' or the like, all in tones astonishingly human and with clear pronunciation. He recites verses and praises himself when he has not made any mistakes; but if he does, he says, ` That's not it, stupid! ' He uses every greeting at the right time of day, and can apply everything he knows with propriety. He can count correctly up to eight."[171] Such examples shows that with parrots something more than mere blind imitation is involved, since such highly endowed specimens as this one can make the proper connection between the acoustic symbol and its mental import, but great caution must be exercised to avoid exaggerated interpretations of their performances. The gray parrot of the African traveller Soyaux showed a greater ability to learn: " An old bird when caught, he never was thoroughly tamed, but was greatly admired on account of his size. He talked very little, only rarely pronouncing the word ` kusu,' which is the native designation for parrots, but his great forte was whistling, in which I have never seen him excelled. Not that he was so specially skilful in whistling whole songs, but the modulation was wonderful—as strong, full, and clear as a bell, like high organ notes. He would roll up and down the wale, skipping a note and sounding it after the succeeding one. His memory of African bird notes was remarkable, and he imitated perfectly the call of plovers, cranes, etc." [172]
(206)
Cockatoos, ring parrots, and some other varieties also learn to speak readily, the latter having been known to acquire as many as a hundred words in various languages, and articulate them perfectly. The cockatoo is a very sociable bird, and indulges in much gesticulation and genuflection while speaking. " Nodding the head and making the drollest bows that shake his bright crest, he turns and clambers about and laughs with real appreciation of the joke when he mimics the movements, words, or cries of another."[173]
In concluding this series of examples I wish to include a few illustrating more directly the social aspect of imitation. I remember that Spencer says it is "sympathy" that induces a whole flock of birds to rise when one flies off, and I think that such effects of imitation on masses may at times be playful as well. The following interesting remark of James's will serve to illustrate what I mean: "There is another sort of human play, into which higher aesthetic feelings enter. I refer to the love of festivities, ceremonies, and ordeals, etc., which seems to be universal in our species. The lowest savages have their dances more or less formally conducted. The various religions have their solemn rites and exercises, and civic and military powers symbolize their grandeur by processions and celebrations of divers sorts. We have our operas and parties and masquerades. An element common to all these ceremonial games, as they are called, is the excitement of concerted action, ac one of an organized crowd. The same acts, performed with a crowd, seem to mean vastly more than when performed alone. A walk with the people on a holiday afternoon, an excursion to drink
(207) beer or coffee at a popular ` resort,' or an ordinary ballroom, are examples of this. Not only are we amused at seeing so many strangers, but there is a distinct stimulation at feeling our share in their collective life. The perception of them is the stimulus, and our reaction upon it is our tendency to join them and do what they are doing, and our unwillingness to be the first to leave off and go home alone."[174]
From the last words it is evident that such mass plays are based on imitation, and that social influences of the greatest importance belong to them. G. Tarde regards it as the fundamental principle of all society. There are, he says, in his daring way of drawing analogies, three great laws of repetition: undulation in physics, the nutritive-generative principle in physiology, and imitation in psychology. Imitation makes society: " la social c'est l'imitation." [175]
Since, then, imitation has so much to do with the social life of men and animals, we are not surprised to find it prominent in their sports. Herds and flocks unite in various games, vocal practice, and even in trying the arts of courtship and combat, when the playful
(208) act of one animal spreads through the whole company like a sudden contagion. Very often, and especially in the courtship plays, what is at first taken up in a mere spirit of imitation becomes the sharpest rivalry.
It is difficult to speak with assurance in this matter, of the larger mammals especially, but I have no doubt whatever that the mad rushing of great herds of wild horses, deer, and goats that is so common on the plains is as often the result of a general desire to play as of apprehended danger. When one cow in a herd leaps down the slope where they are grazing, a large part of the herd will often follow with sportive bounds and mock fighting. Even a drove of pigs will show playful movements that are infectious; the wild gambols of seals and dolphins have already been instanced. Hudson saw a very beautiful game played by a number of weasels. " They were of the common larger kind of weasel (Galictis barbara), about the size of cats, and engaged in a performance that suggested dancing, which so absorbed their attention that they did not notice me when I came within four or five metres of them to see what they were doing. It proved to be a chase on a deserted viscacha mound; they all, about a dozen in number, ran swiftly across, jumping over the holes, turned at the end of the mound and came flying back without ever colliding with one another, though they were apparently beside themselves with excitement, and their paths crossed at every possible angle. It was all done so quickly and with such constant changing of direction that I found it impossible to follow a single animal with my eye, however hard I tried."[176]
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If the destructive impulse that seizes children in the presence of beetles and frogs, or even larger animals, such as cats, has anything playful about it, an example that Hudson relates in his chapter on " Some Strange Instincts of Cattle " may not be out of place here. This execution, as it were, of sick or wounded companions is also common among birds and carnivorous animals that live in companies. When a rat is wounded, his comrades slay him; indeed, Azara says that pinching the tail of a captive rat until he squeals is enough to make his companions fall upon him and bite him to death.[177] Hudson, speaking of his childish memories, says: " It was on a summer's evening and I was out by myself at some distance from the house, playing about the high exposed roots of some old trees; on the other side of the trees the cattle, just returned from pasture, were gathered on the bare, level ground. Hearing a great commotion among them, I climbed on one of the high exposed roots and, looking over, saw a cow on the ground, apparently unable to rise, moaning and bellowing in a distressed way, while a number of her companions were crowding round and goring her."[178] To the same category belongs Dr. Edmonson's somewhat fantastic description of an execution by crows. " In the northern parts of Scotland and in the Faroe Islands extraordinary meetings of crows are occasionally known to occur. They collect in great numbers as if they had been summoned for the occasion; a few of the flock sit with drooping heads and others seem as grave as judges, while others, again, are exceedingly active and noisy; in the course of about one hour they disperse, and it is not uncommon after they have flown away to find one
(210) or two left dead on the spot."[179] Hudson explains such instances of frantic murder as the first two as caused by the impulse to relieve tortured comradesthe enraged animals make for the enemy that has caused their distress, and in a kind of madness fall upon his victim, to whose rescue they have come. This does not seem plausible to me. Darwin and Romanes are of the opinion that it is a special instinct, useful to the species; but this also seems to me to be an inadequate explanation, for it does not tell us why it is not enough for the herd simply to abandon such unfortunates to their fate. The truth of the matter is, I think, that we have here no special instinct, but another form of the old impulse for fighting and destroying that is always ready to break out. " In the misfortune of our best friends there is always something pleasurable," say La Rochefoucauld and Kant. The sight of a cripple or an intoxicated person often arouses in children and savages a wild desire to worry and torment, and just so the inherited impulse to injure and destroy finds expression in the animal and is communicated by means of the powerful principle of imitation, through a whole herd, before quite peaceable. Actual play it can not be said to be, and therefore I shall not spend any more time over the question, though, in a certain sense, it resembles play.
We do find genuine play in the vocal practice that so many mammals constantly indulge in. A zoölogical garden where several lions are kept is a good place to observe this. I have often listened while a young lion lifted up his voice, at first with a peculiar gurgling sound, then in thundering roars in which others joined
(211) in a frightful concert that made the whole house tremble. Brehm says: "Lions in the wilderness, too, delight in this; as soon as one lifts up his mighty voice all others within hearing join him, making magnificent music in the primeval forest." Most remarkable are the concerts of howling apes, whose din fills the South American wilderness; with them, too, a solitary voice is heard at first which incites the rest to accompany the leader. I believe this is a phenomenon of courtship, like the nocturnal wailings of cats.
Imitation seems to be even more provocative of concerts among the birds. I included under experimentation descriptions of the chakar, of the familiar cries and gabbling of geese, ducks, and crows, and of the myriad-voiced concerts of our woodland singers which mutually incite one another. I cite a description of Hudson's which might apply to many birds that delight our eyes by their evolutions in flight. " In clear weather they often rise to a great height and float for hours in the same neighbourhood—a beautiful cloud of birds that does not change its form, . . . but in this apparent vagueness there is perfect order, and among all those hundreds of swiftly gliding forms each knows its place so well that no two ever touch; . . . there is such wonderful precision in the endless curves made by each single bird that an observer can lie on his back for an hour watching this mysterious cloud dance in the open without tiring."
The black-headed ibis of Patagonia, which is almost lark as, a turkey, carries on a strange wild game in the evening. A whole flock seems to be suddenly crazed; sometimes they fly up into the air with startling suddenness, move about in a most erratic way, and as they near the ground start up again and so repeat the
(212) game, while the air for kilometres around vibrates with their harsh, metallic cries. Most ducks confine their play to mock battles on the water, but the beautiful whistling duck of La Plata conducts them on the wing as well. From ten to twenty of them rise in the air until they appear like a tiny speck, or entirely disappear. At this great height they often remain for hours in one place, slowly separating and coming together again, while the high, clear whistle of the male blends admirably with the female's deeper, measured note, and when they approach they strike one another so powerfully with their wings that the sound, which is like hand-clapping, remains audible when the birds are out of sight. The most beautiful member of the quail family found in La Plata is the ypecaha — a fine, strong bird about the size of a hen. A number of them choose a rendezvous near the water. One raises a loud cry three times from the reeds near this spot, and the invitation is quickly responded to by the other birds, who hasten thither from every direction till ten or twenty are collected. Then the performance, which consists in a frightful concert of screams, begins in tones that are strongly suggestive of the human voice when it expresses extreme terror or agonizing pain. A long, penetrating cry of astonishing force and violence follows the deeper tones as though the creature would exhaust all its strength in this alarm. Sometimes this double call is repeated and is accompanied by other sounds that resemble halfsmothered groans, and all the while the birds run about as if possessed, their wings outstretched, their beaks wide open and held up. After two or three minutes the company quietly breaks up.
Jacanas, strange birds with peculiar cockscomblike head decorations, spurs on their wings, and long, thin
(213) claws, give a kind of exhibition which apparently serves the purpose of displaying their wing decorations, which are concealed, under ordinary circumstances. From twelve to fifteen of them come together at the signal, form in a close mass, and, while producing short, quickly repeated notes, unfurl their wings like a standard of banners. Some hold them upright and rigid, others keep them half open with quick vibration, and still others wave them with slow, regular motion back and forth. [180]
In all these examples, which might easily be multiplied, courtship is evidently the unconscious basis, as any unbiased mind must be convinced by a glance at the following chapter. When the contagious influence of imitation becomes a factor in mass games, they are easily converted into veritable orgies. I think we encounter here among the birds the same principles that govern ethnology and the history of human civilization. Their plays correspond with our general dance that is so closely connected with sexual excitement, and the examples given above may be likened to Middendorf's description of a dance of savages. " The dance soon became boisterous, the movements mere leaps and hops, the faces inflamed, the cries more and more ecstatic as each tried to exceed the others. The fur coats and breeches were thrown off, and they all seemed to be seized with a frenzy. Some, indeed, made an efort to withstand it, but soon their heads took the motion, now right, now left, till suddenly the onlookers leaped among the dancers as if they had broken some controlling bonds, and widened the circle." [181]
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The principal difference is that the motions of the human dancer less clearly betray the courting instinct, though it is none the less there, however latent, and we may learn much from the courtship of birds that is applicable to man as well.
8. Curiosity.
Curiosity is the only purely intellectual form of playfulness that I have encountered in the animal world. It is apparently a special form of experimentation, and its psychologic accompaniment is attention, which indeed is a requisite to the exercise of most of the important instincts. Leroy has said that three things demand the animal's attention: the cravings of hunger, those of desire, and the necessity of avoiding danger,[182] and Ribot, too, assigns the same reasons for its importance. [183] This important faculty finds a playful expression in curiosity, which may be called sportive apperception. This function, that forms an essential element in the activity of all the principal instincts, especially those of feeding and flight, oversteps its utilitarian character in curiosity and becomes play. The necessity for mental exercise is the primary reason for this kind of playfulness, added to the increase of knowledge. As James expresses it, it aids in the preservation of the species, "inasmuch as the new object may always be advantageous." [184]
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Next to the child, the monkey is the most curious of animals. I repeat the anecdote often cited from Darwin as the best example we have: " Brehm gives a curious account of the instinctive dread which his monkeys exhibited toward snakes, but their curiosity was so great that they could not desist from occasionally satiating their horror in the most human fashion—by lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes were kept. I was so much surprised at his account that I took a stuffed and coiled-up snake into the monkey house at the Zoölogical Gardens, and the excitement thus caused was one of the most curious spectacles which I ever beheld. Three species of the Cercopithecus were the most alarmed; they dashed about their cages and uttered sharp signal cries of danger which were understood by the other monkeys . . . . I then placed the stuffed specimen on the ground in one of the larger compartments. After a time all the monkeys collected round it in a large circle, and, staring intently, presented a most ludicrous appearance . . . . I then placed a live snake in a paper bag, with the mouth loosely closed, in one of the larger compartments. Then I witnessed what Brehm has described, for monkey after monkey, with head raised high and turned on one side, could not resist taking momentary peeps into the upright bag at.the dreadful object lying quiet at the bottom."[185]
That dogs, too, are curious is a familiar fact. A strange dog attracts immediate attention, and a favourite curb excites as much interest as a lonely tourist bestows on the register of his inn. Curiosity adds to the watch
(216) -dog's value by inciting him to investigate every sound. Scheitlin, overlooking the monkey, calls dogs the most curious of animals next to goats, and, strange to say, nightingales.[186] The curiosity of a dog is very ludicrous when a beetle runs before him; evidently he is a little afraid of the tiny creature, but he can not rest until he has smelled it all over. A dog that Romanes tells of behaved in the same way with a soap bubble rolling on the carpet. He was highly interested, but could not make up his mind whether or not the thing was living, but after some hesitation he overcame his misgivings, approached cautiously, and touched the soap bubble with his paw. " The bubble, of course, burst at once, and I never saw astonishment more unmistakably expressed." [187]
Eimer gives an instance of the curiosity of cows: " As soon as I had my easel and sketchbook arranged the cows grazing about drew nearer and nearer, and stood in a circle around me, motionless and with necks outstretched, gazing at my paper as if to see what was going on. Finally, they came so near as to be annoying, and I was forced to drive them away with my stick. But again and again they renewed their attempt to penetrate the secret."[188]
Anschütz has portrayed the curiosity of horses in a very successful instantaneous photograph. As the photographer kneels on the ground busied with his camera, a number of loose horses surround him, pressing close and stretching their long necks inquiringly toward the strange objects. Scheitlin says of goats: "No
(217) single animal has more curiosity, unless it be the poodle. When a flock of goats is driven through a village, one and another will go into the houses, even into the rooms, and look about without concerning himself as to where the others are gone. He climbs over whatever he can, from mere curiosity, and sometimes goes to the second or third story of a house."[189] And the chamois is just as bad; they can be captured as can gazelles, by the display of a new or strange object, which so excites their curiosity that they forget the danger. Lloyd Morgan reports of his cat: " My cat was asleep on a chair and my little son began blowing a toy horn. The cat, without moving, mewed uneasily. I told my boy to continue blowing. The cat grew more uneasy, and at last got up, stretched herself, and turned toward the source of the discomfort. She stood looking at my boy for a minute as he blew. Then, curling herself up, went to sleep again, and no amount of blowing disturbed her further."[190] The animal had evidently accepted this new impression, and was satisfied to add it to her store of ideas.
A Fräulein Delaistre had a tame weasel, of which she says, among other things: "A notable quality of this animal is its curiosity. If I open a trunk or a drawer or look at a paper he must come and look too."[191]
The raccoon, too, is " curious to the last degree," says Weinland; of the one that has been described playing with a badger Beckmann writes: " One day lie was too severe with the badger, which went off growl-
(218) -ing and rolled into his hole. After a time he put his head out on account of the heat and went to sleep thus intrenched. The mischievous 'coon saw that he could not expect much attention from his friend under these circumstances, and was about to set out for home when the badger suddenly awoke and stretched his narrow red mouth wide open. This so surprised our hero that he turned back to examine the rows of white teeth from every point of view. ' The badger continued immovable in the same position, and this excited the raccoon's curiosity to the highest pitch; at last he ventured to reach out and tap the badger's nose with his paw. In vain, there was no change. This behaviour of his comrade was inexplicable, his impatience increased with every moment, he must solve the riddle at any cost. He wandered restlessly about for a while, apparently undecided how best to pursue the investigation; but reaching a decision at last, he thrust his pointed snout deep in the badger's open jaws. The rest is not difficult to imagine. The jaws closed, the raccoon, caught in the trap, squirmed and floundered like a captive rat. After mighty scuffling and tugging he at length succeeded in tearing his bleeding snout from the cruel teeth of the badger and fled precipitately. This lesson lasted a long time, and after it whenever he went near the badger's kennel he involuntarily put his paw over his nose"
Mice and other rodents are curious,[192] and so are all kinds of seals. J. R. Tennent describes a bunt with tame buffaloes in Ceylon. If they are turned loose at night with lights fastened to their backs and bells hung
(219) around their necks all sorts of wild animals, attracted by curiosity, come to look at them and are captured.[193]
That curiosity is a play closely connected with some of the primary instincts, such as flight and feeding, seems probable from the fact that it is found in some of the lower orders. Indeed, there are many facts in support of this view. Eimer tells us that the boys of Capri take advantage of the curiosity of lizards to catch these elusive creatures. " They make a slipknot in the pliable end of a long, slender straw and, lying down, hold the straw in front of a crevice where the lizard has just disappeared. Curiosity so torments the little creature that it comes nearer and nearer to examine the knot, until the boy seizes his chance to slip it over the head and secure his prize. To excite their curiosity the boys sometimes make their noose of coloured membrane and wet the knot." [194] W. James says of young crocodiles that swarmed around him curiously, that they fled terrified at the slightest movement, but came back again directly. [195]
Romanes, speaking of fish, says: " Curiosity is shown by the readiness, or even eagerness, with which fish will approach to examine any unfamiliar object. So much is that the case that fishermen, like hunters, sometimes trade upon this faculty
And the fisher, with his lamp
And spear, about the low rocks damp
Crept, and struck the fish which vamp
To worship the delusive flame." [196]
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It is a familiar fact that birds and fish and flying insects, as well as many mammals, are attracted by fire. J. S. Gardener noticed, while looking at an island waterfall, that one moth after another hurled itself into the cataract, probably attracted by the glittering water, as others are by flame.[197] The opinion of Romanes, that this is due to curiosity,[198] will hardly be controverted.
Turning now to birds, we may characterize them en masse as curious, so much so, indeed, that many of them fall victims to their curiosity, for all over the world hunters lure them by means of unfamiliar objects, which they approach to investigate. On islands uninhabited by man they will come up to the first human being they see without fear, the better to observe him. The crow family in particular possess this quality in excess; if a cane handle or almost anything is held near a caged raven he will come near it and examine it carefully from every possible point of view. Their efforts to get possession of and hide everything that comes in their way are further manifestations of curiosity. Parrots, too, behave in a similar way. Haast says that the curiosity of the keanestor impels them to examine everything that comes in their way. On one of his expeditions in the mountains he had with great difficulty collected a bundle of rare Alpine plants and laid them for a moment on a projecting rock. During his short absence a keanestor examined the collection and manifested his interest in botanical studies by pushing the whole bundle off the rock, never to be recovered. With ravens, as well as
(221) parrots, mental experimentation is connected with the physical, especially where the destructive instinct is concerned. Paske gives in the Feathered World (1881) an interesting description of a raven that he brought up. It delighted to fly into strange windows and do all sorts of mischief. He once entered, in this way, a room in the opposite house, found a collection of curios that had been left out of their case, and destroyed most of them. He showed his interest in the boys' ball games by stealing and hiding the ball. The following performance of his might have inspired Dickens to a special chapter in Barnaby Rudge: " One day he entered, through the window, a room where a military trial was being conducted, perching on the desk littered with writing materials and important papers, and refusing to be dislodged. He threatened with his bill every one who approached him, until I was sent for and carried him off."
If any strange object is held in a canary's cage he will examine it with great interest, turning his head first to one side and then the other, and it is most amusing to see the little creature crane his neck to look down at something under his cage, while he keeps up a succession of questioning peeps. Rey had a Carolina parrot which was so tame that he allowed it to fly about at will, much to the wonder and excitement of the domestic birds when this foreigner appeared among them. A sparrow was " so fascinated by the gay stranger that he followed the parrot about for a long time, sitting near it and gazing till the parrot returned to the window, without appearing to notice that I stood with a friend at the open casement."
The starling, the robin, the nightingale, the sis-
(222) kin, and many other birds have a great deal of curiosity. [199]
Last, I may mention the vulture, which is noticeable for this quality when young and will come near any one who displays a new and attractive object. Brehm's brother, in Spain, placed an owl in the vultures' cage, and describes the curiosity with which the occupants examined the newcomer. One young vulture approached the bird of night as it sat sulking in a corner, looked him over and began an examination of his feathers, an impertinence to which the owl responded with a sharp blow from his claw.
In most of these examples the animal is represented as seeing a new object and trying to find out what sort of thing it is—curiosity is expressed by approaching it, looking it over, tasting, etc. All this leads us again to the question whether animals may not have a kind of aesthetic perception. The case is quite different with these successive impressions from that of the coloured feathers and stones which they collect, for it is an established fact, as has been said, that among animals motion is more provocative of attention than anything else. Further, it is evident that imitative impulse is more easily awakened by movement than by any attribute of a body at rest. Accordingly, if that "inner imitation " that characterizes aesthetic perception can appear anywhere in animal life it may be looked for as a consequence of the observation of the motions of other animals, preferably individuals of the same species. Under the heading of imitative play it wag shown that such movements do produce external imitation; so it
(223) would appear that the animal, though aware of the stimulation to external imitation from optical and acoustic impressions, is able to hold it in check so that an internal excitation alone is produced by the imitative impulse, whose reflex in consciousness consists of " feelings of imitation." In order to illustrate my conception of the origin of such aesthetic feeling I venture to cite a progressive series of examples from human life. A boy on the streets sees some other boys chasing a comrade in play; he looks on for a few seconds, his interest constantly increasing, until he joins the pursuers. These few seconds of observation I regard as the primary form of aesthetic perception directed toward the movements that incite his impulse of imitation, for there is an inner imitation as an antecedent or point of departure for the outer. A boy takes part in a game involving complicated movements. He is taken prisoner by the opposing party and must stand in a base until one of his own side frees him. esthetic perception is manifest in the absorbed attention with which he enters into all the movements of his companions, for, while his impulse to external imitation is so far arrested by the laws of the game that it can not attain its object at once, this result follows as soon as the boy is at liberty to move from the base.-Suppose some witnesses of a race. Here the impulse to active imitation does not tend to external discharge. No one tries to leave his seat, but contents himself with expressing the feelingproduced by internal imitation of the varying operations. Here we have the simplest and most primary form of pure aesthetic perception.—We are sitting in the theatre, the simulated actions and tones of voice are only the means of appealing to our sympathy and placing us mentally in touch with what is being
(224) played on the stage, and yet our facial expression corresponds in a certain degree with that of the actor. Or suppose we are merely listening to a recital, we still feel all the sympathetic passion that words can produce. Indeed, the mere reading of a narrative is sufficient to produce that internal effect of imitation which consists in aesthetic pleasure. Don Quixote shows us how strong this impulse may be when he tries to realize the ideal which he has formed by reading. It is illustrated, too, by boys who read of a seaman's life till they can not be restrained from adopting his calling with all its hardships and dangers; by the suicides that have resulted from reading The Sorrows of Werther; and by the mystical religious life of saints, and the stigmata produced by auto-suggestion in many ecstatic fanatics. All these are externalized effects of aesthetic emotion.
A glance over these illustrations shows at once that those effects depending on the power of speech can not, of course, be attributed to animals, but that the cases of the boys at play are probably equally well applicable to them. All consciously imitative play must be preceded by that primary form of aesthetic perception which we have called " inner imitation," as, for example, when the monkey mimics his master, or when the starling, with head on one side, listens attentively to an air whistled in his presence. But, on the other hand, there are plenty of examples of attentive watching and listening without any external imitation. Most conspicuous in this class is the hearkening of the female bird to the song of the male. It can not be questioned that she experiences an internal sympathy with his excitement, for sometimes this feeling is so strong as to require some kind of outward expression, and she joins, though imperfectly, in the song of the male, and
(225) sometimes even takes part in his battles. A description already quoted says: " Sometimes a female is found on the arena taking up a position like that of the males and running about with them; but she does not long mingle in the strife, and soon runs away." No clearer proof could be desired that the female feels a secret sympathy in the love-plays carried on before her, for in such a case it evidently clamours for expression until the impulse to join in the song or dance is irresistible, as in the orgies described by Middendorf. Many birds arrange a regular stage or arena. Hudson says: "There are human dances in which only one person performs at a time, the rest of the company looking on, and some birds in widely separated genera have dances of this kind. A striking example is the rupicola, or cock-of-the-rock, of tropical South America. A mossy level spot of earth surrounded by bushes is selected for a dancing place, and kept well cleared of sticks and stones; round this area the birds assemble, when a cockbird, with vivid orange-scarlet crest and plumage, steps into it, and with spreading wings and tail begins a series of movements as if dancing a minuet; finally, carried away with excitement, he leaps and gyrates in the most astonishing manner, until, becoming exhausted, he retires, and another bird takes his place."[200]
There are examples on record, too, that seem to indicate that some of the higher animals observe the movements of other than their own kind with a sort of aesthetic perception. The most familiar of these is that of a dog looking out of a window. Schopenhauer considered this critical watching of passersby that can
(226) have no other intent than that of taking note of the various figures on the street as the most human quality displayed by animals. It is certainly comical to see a big dog with his forepaws on the window-sill gazing, for it may be half an hour, just as a man would do, with thoughtful, wrinkled brow, into the street.But other animals, too, do the same sort of thing. A forester in Würtemberg had a tame doe, of which, among other things, he relates the following: " She likes to stand on the window-sill and watch what is passing outside."[201]
Among monkeys the Cerocebus albigena, a rather large black African ape, may be instanced. Pechuël-Loesche has described it in detail: " But he was drollest when some new problem exercised his busy brain, as when we used the astronomical instruments before him or carried on some unusual operation. He would sit on the ground or a trunk or barrel in the attitude of a deeply reflecting man, one hand holding his chin up and a finger pressed on his lips, while he followed our every movement, softly humming or grunting, and occasionally indulging in one of the philippics already described." (This species has a very loud characteristic roar. )'[202] A. Günzel contributes this about a tame magpie: "At the time of the morning recess he repaired to the playground of the school children, generally that of the boys, to watch their romps. At these times he expressed his satisfaction by jumping about and snapping his beak." [203]
The following story is told of a goose: " Some years
(227) ago a goose excited considerable attention in a small town by its strange actions. Whenever the parish clerk came from the market with his great bell, as was the custom, to make a proclamation, a black. and white goose left the flocks assembled at the brook and waddled hastily toward the circle of listening peasants. There she stood immovable all through the ceremony, with head outstretched as though she would parody the attentive attitude of the other auditors, until the bell was taken up. At this moment she set out to follow the officer to the next street, where she again took the listening attitude, and in this way accompanied the man all over the widespread town, only seeking her companions at the brook when he returned to his office. This habit was kept up for many months."[204] The famous parrot belonging to Director Kastner, in Vienna, always noticed when a bottle was about to be uncorked, and imitated the pop before it came, showing absorbed attention and anticipation.[205]
Two points of psychological interest are still to be noted. When I spoke of aesthetic attention, I did not mean to imply that aesthetic pleasure consists in conscious acts of attention, the word being used in the ordinary sense. If, for example, the female bird witnessing the performance of the males once attained to apperception, no doubt the imitative impulse would be roused just as with ourselves, without the conscious effort of attention. The question whether there may not be a constant unconscious anticipation may be answered affirmatively on various ground, but this is not the place to explain them. Secondly, it may be re-
(228) marked that while the foregoing examples, of whose aesthetic character I have no doubt whatever, should be looked upon as only elementary expressions of aesthetic pleasure, they yet serve to show that the sphere of aesthetics is infinitely wider than that of the beautiful.
