THE PLAY OF ANIMALS 219 



Spring-time, and we all have vivid reminiscences or present 

 experience of what it means. It is, to say the least, very 

 widespread among mankind, though one reads in Mr. 

 Kearton's entertaining book, With Nature and a Camera, 

 the following sentences in regard to the people of St. 

 Kilda : " I innocently asked the minister one day what 

 kind of games the children played. The old man smiled 

 good-naturedly at my ignorance, and answered : ' None 

 whatever ; their parents would consider it frivolity to have 

 them taught anything except climbing rocks, catching 

 sheep, and such other things as will become necessary to 

 them in after-life.' " Now, while we do not go the length of 

 placing play quite in the foreground of life, or of accepting 

 a brilliant artist's description of life as " a series of inter- 

 ruptions from golf/' we believe that Groos is right in his 

 thesis that play is fundamentally important. There are, 

 as we shall see, strong biological reasons for believing 

 that the good people of St. Kilda would increase their 

 present and future effectiveness, as well as happiness, if 

 they let the children play. That would probably do more 

 than increased postal communication to put aside " life- 

 harming heaviness." 



When we watch the kittens with their ball, the dogs 

 and their sham-hunt, the lambs and their races, the monkeys 

 and their " tig," we get a vivid impression of play. We 

 may say, negatively, that play is not work, though it may be 

 as strenuous ; that play is not mere exercise, though, 

 perhaps, it exercises best ; that play has no seriously 

 perceived or conceived end for the sake of which it is 

 played, though it may be, while it lasts, most serious ; that 

 it is not necessarily social, for many an animal (like many a 

 man) seems to be quite happy playing alone ; and that it is 

 not necessarily competitive, though that often gives zest 

 to it. Of its positive content, we shall speak later. For 



