OF WILD ANIMALS 241 



the game. The other cranes look on admiringly and sometimes 

 a spectator shrilly trumpets his approval. 



In his new book, "The Friendly Arctic," Mr. Vilhjalmur 

 Stefansson records an interesting example of play indulged 

 in jointly by a frivolous arctic fox and eight yearling barren- 

 ground caribou. It was a game of tag, or its wild equivalent. 

 The fox ran into and through the group of caribou fawns, 

 which gave chase and tried to catch the fox, but in vain. At last 

 the fawns gave up the chase, returned to their original position, 

 and came to parade rest. Then back came the fox. Again 

 it scurried through the group in a most tantalizing manner, 

 which soon provoked the fawns to chase the fox anew. At the 

 end of this inning the caribou again abandoned the chase, 

 whereupon the fox went off to attend to other affairs. 



On the whole, the play of wild animals is a large field and 

 no writer will exhaust it with one chapter. Very sincerely 

 do we wish that at least one of the many romance writers who 

 are so industriously inventing wild-animal blood-and-thunder 

 stories would do more work with his eyes and less with 

 his imagination. 



