Niebuhr saw the children on the Euphrates playing the same game. The other amusement of this kind is skipping stones on water; the Greeks called it ἐποστρακισμός. Minucius Felix describes it graphically and with sympathetic insight: “Is lusus est: testam teretem jactatione fluctuum levigatam, legere de litore; eam testam plano situ digitis, comprehensam, inclinem ipsum atque humilem, quantum potest, super undas inrotare; ut illud jaculum vel dorsum maris raderet; vel enataret, dum leni impetu labitur; vel summis fluctibus tonsis emicaret dum assiduo saltu sublevatur. Is se in pueris victorem ferebat, cujus testula et procurreret longius et frequentibus exsiliret.”[256] As many as fifty German names for this sport might be enumerated, some of them showing pretty fancies and æsthetic personification. Fischart, of course, makes his Gargantua a master in this art too. He says in his quaint German, “Gargantua warff breyde Kiesestein am Gastaden schlimms aufs Wasser, dass es ob dem Wasser weiss nicht wie viel Sprung thaten.”[257] (_d_) Throwing at a Mark If throwing is, as many believe, an inherited impulse at bottom, then it must belong with the fighting instincts, since it gives a man the power to slay his enemy or his prey without actual contact with either. However that may be, throwing at a mark must have originated in such hostile use of the ability to throw at all, and it is significant that by far the most numerous and popular games of the kind require a target, and belong essentially to the male. Thus it may be questioned whether the whole subject would not better be treated in connection with fighting play; but it seems to me that consciousness of the fact that the target is a symbol of an opponent or of prey hardly forms any considerable element in the satisfaction derived from the sport, and for that reason I deem it fitting to notice it briefly in this connection. Moreover, its biological significance is more extensive than is that of mere belligerence, for it promotes to a higher degree than almost any other play the concentration of attention and the capacity of the organism for swift and sure reaction.