84 PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON ON 
minutes ; when they ceased, the next flock took up the strain, 
and after it the next, and so on, until the notes of the flocks 
on 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.” Here play reached to some dignity in 
art. Play is often, indeed, like the young form of art. 
In Mr Witchell’s interesting book on Zhe Evolution of 
Bird-Song, I was pleased to find the thesis that “the 
primary necessity to the development of varied song in 
species or individual is leisure.” The persecuted, laborious, 
careful birds are apt to be songless. “A want of leisure 
may have been a potent cause of the lack of individual 
variation of phrases in the birds of the tropical regions.” I 
think you will allow that this view agrees well with what 
we have seen in regard to play. 
Among the most important of human plays is that which 
seems almost, if not quite, universal among little girls—the 
doll-play, in which we see a marvellous premonition of 
maternal care. I am not an authority on the subject, but I 
cannot agree with those who explain it as wholly imitative. 
It may be embellished by imitation; it is surely itself 
instinctive. 
Animals may have pets—as many ants have—and friendly 
companionships with creatures different from themselves, 
but there seems no reliable evidence of animal dolls. 
An approach may perhaps be found in those cases where 
monkeys take extraordinary fancies to particular objects, 
pieces of wood, brushes and the like, taking them to sleep 
with them, fondling them, and fighting over them. Pechuel- 
Loesche relates a very circumstantial case of a monkey 
which came very near making a doll of a large thermometer. 
Another approach may perhaps be found in the enormous 
collection of cases in which an animal cherishes the young 
of another kind, as a dog a chicken; and another approach 
has been detected by some in the habit that a few half- 
crown birds, such as swallows, have of feeding and caring for 
their younger kin. In this connection, it might repay one 
to think carefully over the parental carefulness of worker- 
ants, bees, and termites, which are not themselves parents. 
