io8 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



antics, if you like of his ancestors, and giving to 

 his growing muscles the exercise that they need. 

 Watch lambs or fawns or foals at play, and you will 

 see that, although a feeble intelligence limits their 

 ideas of mischief, they are exactly like boys. Two 

 foals may be playing at biting each other's necks 

 when one suddenly catches sight of an old newspaper 

 on the ground. He takes it by the corner with his 

 teeth and gallops off, half scared himself, and scaring 

 all the others by its fluttering. Having nearly 

 stampeded the whole herd, he pulls up by the side 

 of his playmate and drops the paper, making the 

 other jump, all four feet together, off the ground as 

 if some one had banged it up under him. Then the 

 two strategically approach the newspaper, starting 

 back every time that a corner flutters in the wind, 

 and carefully pawing short of it. In the middle of 

 this they suddenly forget all about it, and fall to 

 biting necks again, trampling the newspaper under 

 foot in the scuffle. All this occupies perhaps five 

 minutes ; but if you watch them for a whole afternoon 

 they will be doing something absurd and troublesome 

 to the others all the while. It gives you sympathy 

 with boys, and helps you to understand why a boy 

 cannot pass iron railings without rattling a stick 

 along them ; why he hunts the cat, tears his clothes 

 in climbing trees, and whistles through his fingers. 

 He does these things because he is a young animal, 

 and has to find out his relationship to everything 

 around, as well as the capacity of each of his muscles. 

 The boy who is not mischievous and disorderly is 

 liable to make a poor specimen of Homo sapiens. 



