THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 125 



to play, deception, fleeing, pursuing, overtaking, seiz- 

 ing, and defence. I am anxious to emphasize tlie vari- 

 ous movements involved on account of the unsatisfac- 

 tory nature of the reports of the series of examples I 

 am about to relate. In order to avoid having too 

 many subdivisions, I cite cases of play between animals 

 of different kinds and between animals and men pro- 

 miscuously. 



" While I was staying in Tunis," says Alix, " my 

 dog Sfax doted on playing hide and seek with the 

 native babies. . . . Concealing himself among the wood- 

 piles, Sfax described the most complicated zigzag, and 

 just when five or six of the youngsters thought they 

 were going to put their hands on him he w^ould appear 

 on a pile twenty metres away, sometimes in front, 

 sometimes behind, sometimes to the right or left. He 

 would stand there with an air of careless indifference 

 till his playfellows ran within two or three metres of 

 him; then gaily wagging his tail, he set off to make 

 more zigzags, and so on for more than an hour." * 



Young horses gallop about the meadows, leaping 

 with joy; those grazing on the Eussian steppes some- 

 times accompany travelling carriages at a gallop for 

 many hours, f 



Brehm says: " The tame cougar (puma) plays with 

 his master, delighting to hide at his approach and then 

 spring out unexpectedly, just as a tame lion does. It 

 may well be supposed that such savage demonstration 

 of affection is anything but agreeable at an inoppor- 

 tune moment." I Hudson considers the puma the most 



* L'esprit de nos betes, p. 498. 



f Scheitlin, Thierseelenkiinde, ii, p. 242. 



X See Reng^er, Saugethiere von Paraguay, p. 189. A tame 

 jynx, brought up by 0. v. Loewis, behaved in the same way. Dcr 

 zoologische Garten, 186G, Xo. 4. 



