8i4 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



was shot right in the eye. But afterwards they practised on the 

 nose, ears, and Ups, and seemed to do so intentionally from a sheer 

 sporting love of the thing." So Dr. H. M. Kyle reports in his 

 Biology of Fishes (1926). Brehm continues: "With what certainty 

 and celerity the fish had learnt to shoot can be judged from the 

 fact, that even when one knew the shot was coming, at three feet 

 away, one had no time to close one's eye". Of course a somewhat 

 anecdotal report of this type must be critically scrutinised, but 

 our point here is the general one that the rubric of "play" should 

 hardly be extended to cover instances of clever individual adven- 

 ture, however playful these may seem. The ecological concept of 

 animal play is most useful when it is employed in the strictest sense, 

 as already defined. 



INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS 



In summer man thinks of holidaying, even when he can't; but 

 in Wild Nature summer is the season of intensest industry. All over 

 the green earth the chemical factories are silently busy, using the 

 red-orange-yellow rays of the sunshine as the power by which they 

 split carbon dioxide, and build up sugars and still more complex 

 and valuable carbon-compounds. As the plants make far more 

 foodstuff than they need for themselves, there is a surplusage for 

 the animal world; and as the carnivores depend on the herbivores, 

 we may justly say that all flesh is transmogrified grass. Thus summer 

 is the time of greatest animal industry because there is a maximum 

 of energy available for transformation. 



Animals that were feeling their way in spring are able in summer 

 to strike out on their own; and work is the natural expression 

 of vigour. It is as natural as play. Happiness is in no small 

 degree the reflex of harmonious functioning; and wholesome work 

 is its own reward. As Luther wisely said: "When I rest, I rust." 

 As George Meredith puts it: "Behold the life of ease, it drifts." 



Another reason for the industry of summer is to be found in the 

 tonic power of the sunshine, when there is not too much. And we 

 must not forget another point of view, that many kinds of animals 

 must be industrious in summer if they are to keep ali^ e during the 

 winter. In other words, in the course of ages there has been an 

 elimination of the sluggish and a fostering of the industrious. 



It is not as if animals could look ahead with a thrifty eye, but the 

 fact remains that animal industry has often "survival value". The 

 perennial beehive is a good example, in contrast to, let us say, the 

 community of Humble-bees, from amid which only the young queens 

 manage to survive the winter. And so there are permanent ant-hills, 

 perennial because of their stores. We are not unaware of the seamy 



