THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 85 



8. Imitative plays. 



9. Curiosity. 



This arrangement will be followed in order through- 

 out, except that I have treated love plays, which deserve 

 more than superficial elaboration, in a separate chap- 

 ter, after all the others. 



1. Experimentation. 



In opening this subject we are at once confronted 

 by a group of phenomena, familar enough in children, 

 but hardly noticed heretofore in the psychology of ani- 

 mals. The term experimentation is here used to de- 

 note 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; gnaw- 

 ing and scratching; exercising the voice and making 

 other sounds; rending, pulling, tearing, tugging, kick- 

 ing, lifting, and dropping objects, etc. Such experi- 

 mental 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, atten- 

 tion, will power, memory, etc. They form the com- 

 mon foundation on which the specialized plays are 

 built up. Though the term hardly seems quite applica- 

 ble 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, op- 

 tics, and mechanics." He says, "Children take the great- 

 est pleasure in turning things around, in lifting them, 

 sticking keys in locks or anything of the sort, even in 



