220 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



It is a familiar fact that birds and fish and flying 

 insects, as well as many mammals, are attracted by fire. 

 J. S. Gardener noticed, while looking at an island 

 waterfall, that one moth after another hurled itself into 

 the cataract, probably attracted by the glittering water, 

 as others are by flame.* The opinion of Eomanes, 

 that this is due to curiosity,! will hardly be contro- 

 verted. 



Turning now to birds, we may characterize them 

 en masse as curious, so much so, indeed, that many of 

 them fall victims to their curiosity, for all over the 

 world hunters lure them by means of unfamiliar ob- 

 jects, which they approach to investigate. On islands 

 uninhabited by man they will come up to the first 

 human being they see without fear, the better to ob- 

 serve him. The crow family in particular possess this 

 quality in excess; if a cane handle or almost anything 

 is held near a caged raven he will come near it and 

 examine it carefully from every possible point of view. 

 Their efforts to get possession of and hide every- 

 thing that comes in their way are further manifesta- 

 tions of curiosity. Parrots, too, behave in a similar 

 way. Haast says that the curiosity of the keanestor im- 

 pels them to examine everything that comes in their 

 way. On one of his expeditions in the mountains he 

 had with great difficulty collected a bundle of rare 

 Alpine plants and laid them for a moment on a project- 

 ing rock. During his short absence a keanestor ex- 

 amined the collection and manifested his interest in 

 botanical studies by pushing the whole bundle off the 

 rock, never to be recovered. With ravens, as well as 



* Nature, vol. xxv, p. 436. 



f Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 279. 



