THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 87 



from five to six weeks play with their mother's tail, 

 as do all the cat tribe. He also tells of a young fish-otter 

 that snapped at its tail and fore paws. This, however, 

 appears to belong rather to the chase phenomena, as it 

 is not purely experimental. But there are no clearly 

 defined boundaries between general experimentation 

 and specialized plays. The cat observed by Wesley Mills 

 touched the poker (on its fifty-ninth day), which was 

 hot. It hissed, but soon after it touched it again " in 

 its usual persistent way." It was fond of knocking 

 down spools from the table, and especially delighted in 

 taking pins out of the cushion. 



A young polar bear that I knew often lay on its 

 back and bit its paws, or tried to tear a piece of paper, 

 and it has frequently been noticed that young bears make 

 a humming kind of sound, ending with a smack, when 

 they suck their paws.* Falkenstein relates of his go- 

 rilla, about a year and a quarter old: " He delighted in 

 the bath, and after a while tried to help himself when 

 I did not appear at his side at the right moment with 

 sponge and soap. That the water all ran out of the 

 tub in a few moments did not affect his enthusiasm. 

 He paddled on all fours in the wet, like the little dark- 

 ies during a shower." f 



Little nestlings make fluttering efforts before they 

 can fly, and young sparrows chirp so lustily in the nest 

 as to suggest genuine voice practice. " Immediately on 

 being hatched," says Hermann Miiller, "the young 

 birds begin to lift up their voices. Of canaries, gold- 

 finches, siskins, and bullfinches hatched in confinement, 

 canaries peeped earliest and loudest, bullfinches latest 



* L. Brehm, Bilder aus dem Thiergarten in Hamburg— 2, Un- 

 sere Baren, Gartenlaube, p. 12. 



f Falkenstein, M-pungu, Gartenlaube, 1876, p. 556. 

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