n8 PROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION 



elephants, monkeys, are all great at play. And in playing they 

 are not merely working off a surplus of energy, but getting 

 their muscles to work in harmony, and at the same time rehears- 

 ing in sport the hunting and fighting that will be for them the 

 serious business of life. Karl Groos has very little to say about 

 the play of elephants. But their striplings develop their young 

 intelligences in the same way as the young of other species that 

 are endowed with a good deal of brain power. Up to the age 

 of seven or eight they are devoted to play of a butting, rough- 

 and-tumble style, a little over-rough sometimes for a tender 

 infant, and in his distress he will call loudly for his mother. 1 

 And does not the spirit of play survive in the sense of humour 

 shown sometimes by the adult elephant ? For I must accept 

 some of the stories, Indian and others, told to his credit, though 

 Mr Lockwood Kipling would discredit them and whittle his 

 intelligence down till there is nothing left of it. 



Play, then, is an instinct through which the harmonious 

 co-operation of the muscles is brought about and the intelligence 

 is developed. It is a preparation for, and a rehearsal of, the 

 battle of real life. This view must, I think, find general 

 acceptance, since the broad facts are in its favour. Where 

 infancy is a period of play, there we find, in the adult, versatility 

 and intelligence. Where, as in the bee or the caterpillar, the 

 business of life is the only thing thought of, there we find often 

 great skill, but it is of the instinctive stereotyped kind. 



One difficulty in the way of the theory I must mention. 

 Young birds in the nest get no play and practically no exercise. 

 Under the circumstances even the most sedate gambols would 

 often be dangerous. When they have the use of their wings 

 they take a delight in exercising them, and those that have been 

 penned up in nests, e.g. crows, red-polls (Acanthis /inaria), 

 parrots, turn out at least as clever as those who have taken 

 walking exercise and hunted for food from the hour they 

 pecked through the shell. But the difficulty is not a very 

 great one. In no birds is intelligence of a high order found. 



1 The play of young elephants has been described to me by Mr Warington Smyth, 

 who has watched them playing in Siam. 



