THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 183 



it among many animals that do not live in companies, 

 as the instances which follow will show. 



But when, it will be asked, can imitation be called 

 play? Kemembering our definition of play as instinc- 

 tive activity exerted for purposes of practice or exercise, 

 and without serious intent, it is easy to discriminate 

 between imitation that is playful and imitation that is 

 earnest. When a crow flies away with a warning cry, 

 and the whole flock follows him, play has nothing to 

 do with it. And the same is true of the beautiful in- 

 stance given in Nature, September 12, 1889: "Two 

 cats were on a roof, from which it was necessary to 

 jump. Tom made the spring, but Tabby's courage 

 failed and she drew back with a cry of distress, where- 

 upon Tom leaped back, and, giving a cheerful mew as 

 much as to say, l See how easy it is/ jumped across 

 again, followed this time by Tabby." But imitation 

 appears in the character of play when young animals 

 imitate the movements of their parents or other ani- 

 mals with no apparent aim but practice, when parrots 

 reproduce every possible noise and tone, when monkeys 

 copy their masters, and when animals have large gath- 

 erings for the purpose of competing with one another. 

 Sully holds * that the imitative impulse is brought out 

 only by such movements as are connected with " pleasur- 

 able interest " ; but where movements of flight from ap- 

 proaching danger are concerned this can not invariably 

 be true. Playful imitation, however, must always be 

 connected with "pleasurable interest," and indeed it 

 seems probable that such feelings of pleasure rest on the 

 basis common to all play, which a searching examina- 

 tion will discover to be experimentation in this case, as 



* The Human Mind, ii, p. 219. 

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