Primitive Games. 277 



see the thing done, each player has a smaller player, or 

 two, on his shoulders, and all are chattering, and squeal- 

 ing and gesticulating, and running without order hither 

 and thither, but none ever passing far from the 

 central troop which they form. It is a curiously close 

 imitation of a troop of monkeys when sometimes 

 these are of a sudden alarmed and angered. 



Another game represents an acoorie in a pen and the 

 attempts of a jaguar to get him out of it. The 

 players form a ring, their faces inwards, their arms 

 round each other's necks. Inside the circle thus formed 

 one player crouches, as an acoorie inside a pen. Out- 

 side the pen another player watches ; it is the jaguar 

 looking with hungry eye on the acoorie. He tries to 

 get the acoorie out between the bars of its pen — that is 

 between the legs of the circle of players. But the living 

 pen whirls round and round ; and it is long before the 

 jaguar succeeds in grasping the acoorie and dragging it 

 out. 



A flock of vicissi duck resting on the ground in a 

 close-packed, irregular-shaped group, is well imitated in 

 another game. The leading duck, at some supposed 

 sign of danger, starts the whole flock, which now darts 

 backward and forward in straight duck-like flights in 

 among the houses, all the players imitating the curious 

 characteristic whistling of the vicissi. 



Again, one player only remaining detached, a pro- 

 cession forms and moves. The single player, continu- 

 ally moving too, ever faces the leader of the file, until, 

 with the cry of a hawk, he runs down one side of the 

 file to seize the hindmost of its members, each one of 

 whom, as though startled by the sudden cry, crouches 



