THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 91 



was finished, for it was well known that they would soon 

 spoil undried cement with their claws. 



The following relates to dogs that have well passed 

 their infancy. It may be called experimentation when 

 a dog presses or rather scratches a beetle to death with 

 his paw, as they are given to doing with a strange mix- 

 ture of curiosity and aversion. A St. Bernard, three 

 and a half years old, that I formerly owned, spent many 

 hours every day gnawing to bits any pieces of wood he 

 could get hold of, usually from our wood pile unfor- 

 tunately. 



Alix tells of an Arabian dog that frequently amused 

 itself playing with its own shadow on the wall. " Now 

 straightening up his long ears, now turning them to 

 right or left, now throwing them back, he produced in 

 this way strange figures which appeared to amuse him 

 greatly." * 



A trustworthy person once told me of a dog that 

 had played so much with the damper of a stove that 

 he understood perfectly well how to turn it on. That 

 he ever did so with the intention of raising the tem- 

 perature seems to me a hazardous statement. 



Some of the examples so far given relate to the 

 destructive impulse, which is, however, only an ex- 

 tended kind of experimentation. Thus Scheitlin relates 

 of an elephant : f " How amusingly that elephant in 

 Cassel acted when his attendant forgot him in his 

 stable! He went into the house, collected all the mov- 

 ables — tables, chairs, stools, pictures, and even the bed 

 from the chamber — in a pile in the sitting-room, wet 

 them all over, and walked out in the field as if he had 

 not been at any mischief," 



* E. Alix, L'esprit de nos betes, p. 440. 

 f Thierseelenkiinde, ii, p. 178. 



