168 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



Garden, a school of goldfish playing at something 

 very much like it. 



This observer was lying stretched out upon an 

 old bridge watching the minnows through a 

 crack between the planks, when he saw one leap 

 out of the water over a small twig floating at the 

 surface. Instantly another minnow broke the 

 water, followed by another and another, the whole 

 school, as so many sheep, or so many children, 

 following the leader over the twig. 



The love of play seems to spring from one of 

 the elemental needs of animal life, and the games 

 of us human children seem to have been played 

 before the dry land was, when there were only 

 water-babies in the world, for certainly the fish 

 never learned "follow my leader" from us. Nor 

 did my young bees their game of "prisoners' 

 base," which they play almost every summer 

 noontime in front of the hives. And what is the 

 game the flies play about the cord of the drop- 

 light in the center of the kitchen ceiling? 



And what was the game the butterflies were 

 playing over the peak of Hood? And how 

 came they there ? And whither went they when 

 the sun sank that night, and the wind swung 



