210 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



or two left dead on the spot." * Hudson explains 

 such instances of frantic murder as the first two as 

 caused by the impulse to relieve tortured comrades — 

 the enraged animals make for the enemy that has caused 

 their distress, and in a kind of madness fall upon his 

 victim, to whose rescue they have come. This does 

 not seem plausible to me. Darwin and Eomanes are 

 of the opinion that it is a special instinct, useful to the 

 species; but this also seems to me to be an inadequate 

 explanation, for it does not tell us why it is not enough 

 for the herd simply to abandon such unfortunates to 

 their fate. The truth of the matter is, I think, that 

 we have here no special instinct, but another form of 

 the old impulse for fighting and destroying that is al- 

 ways ready to break out. " In the misfortune of our 

 best friends there is always something pleasurable," 

 say La Eochefoucauld and Kant. The sight of a crip- 

 ple or an intoxicated person often arouses in children 

 and savages a wild desire to worry and torment, and 

 just so the inherited impulse to injure and destroy 

 finds expression in the animal and is communicated 

 by means of the powerful principle of imitation, 

 through a whole herd, before quite peaceable. Actual 

 play it can not be said to be, and therefore I shall not 

 spend any more time over the question, though, in a 

 certain sense, it resembles play. 



We do find genuine play in the vocal practice that 

 so many mammals constantly indulge in. A zoological 

 garden where several lions are kept is a good place to 

 observe this. I have often listened while a young lion 

 lifted up his voice, at first with a peculiar gurgling 

 sound, then in thundering roars in which others joined 



* Romanes, Animal Intelligence, p. 324. 



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