PASTIME OF ANIMALS 



exact appearance, the rules. I doubt whether sex 

 has necessarily much to do with the frolic of animals. 

 It is not safe, always, to reason from the habits of 

 domesticated animals, or one might point to the fact 

 that puppies and kittens play with one another 

 regardless of sex. But we need hardly go to tamed 

 life for evidence in this. The males among various 

 wild creatures will whisk and pirouette and chivvy 

 each other to the top of their bent, though no female 

 of their kind is near, and though the season is not 

 one at which sex influence is very strong. 



By the river Lambourn, I watched a game 

 between two full-grown stoats. The herbage of the 

 water meadow being thick in patches, they often 

 could not see each other easily, but the stoat which 

 was playing the part of hare kept up an incessant 

 bird-like chatter, so that the stoat which represented 

 the hound might not get out of touch. The pursuit 

 was partly by ear, partly by eye for, though the 

 pursuer could not possibly have seen much, if any- 

 thing of the body or head, it would see constantly 

 the jet black brush of its friend, brandished about. 

 These stoats ran in circles, describing many figures 

 of eight in the grass, till suddenly they got wind of 

 me, and the game ended, the players disappearing at 

 once. 



Ludicrous as this stoat game was a sort of 

 babyish frolic of hide-and-seek, the hider all the 

 while screaming shrilly and whisking his tail in the 

 air lest the seeker might lose touch of him in 

 the thick grass it was sober compared with the 



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