114 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



pleasure was to clamber on piles of wood or stone, on 

 walls and rocks, and to mount the stairs." * 



The purely playful motions of cats should be men- 

 tioned here. They delight in racing about, but not so 

 often, I think, in circles, as dogs do. They prefer 

 straight lines and sharp turns with the genuine goat 

 jump. This sudden flight into the air, which appears 

 to take place without the animal's knowledge or inten- 

 tion, can not here be preparatory to life in the moun- 

 tains, but the cat finds the high jump very useful, not 

 only in pouncing on its prey, but also in escaping its 

 hereditary enemy. Chamois are, of course, adepts in 

 high jumping. A very remarkable movement play is re- 

 ported of them, whose actual occurrence was vouched 

 for to Brehm by two witnesses. " When in sum- 

 mer the chamois climb up to the perpetual snow, they 

 delight to play on it. They throw themselves in a 

 crouching position on the upper end of a steep, snow- 

 covered incline, work all four legs with a swimming 

 motion to get a start, and then slide down on the sur- 

 face of the snow, often traversing a distance of from a 

 hundred to a hundred and fifty metres in this way, while 

 the snow flies up and covers them with a fine powder. 

 Arrived at the bottom, they spring to their feet and 

 slowly clamber up again the distance they have slidden 

 down. The rest of the flock watch their sliding com- 

 rades approvingly, and one by one begin the same game. 

 Often a chamois travels down the snow slide two or 

 three times, or even more. Several of them frequently 

 come roughly together at the bottom." If this descrip- 

 tion is to be relied upon, we have here, as in the swing- 

 ing of birds and many other forms of experimentation, 



* H. 0. Lenz, Gemeinniitzige Naturgeschichte, 1851, i, p. 612. 



