In the imitation of particular sounds poetry offers further indulgence to the enjoyment of repetition, to the amusement of adults and delight of children. This is really imitative play and as such belongs to a later division of our subject; yet for the listener it is also an exercise in repetition, and is conspicuous in many refrains. Minor says: “The imitation of musical instruments by means of articulate or nondescript sounds is common in folk songs. The shepherd’s pipe, the horn, trumpet, and drum are introduced in pastoral, hunting, and military pieces.”[288] Children are especially partial to the mimicry of animals, and some of the formulæ have become traditional. The German robin sings, it seems, “Buble witt witt witt, I will dir e Krüi-zerrle gean.” The sparrow says “Twitter, twitter”; the quail “Bob White, peas ripe?” the cackling hen in English, “Cut, cut, cadahcut,” and in German “Duck di duck Alli Stuck Unter mî Ruck.” Finally, we must not forget a very popular game founded on recognition. A whole company will dance around a blindfolded person until he hits on the floor with a stick, whereupon they all stand still, and he touches one and attempts to identify him by the sound of his voice, having three trials. Sometimes the sense of touch is allowed to assist the recognition, as in blind-man’s-buff and the Greek μυίνδα.[289] (_b_) Reflective Memory Playful exercise of the recollective faculty, dependent on the enjoyment of reproduction as such rather than on any quality of the memory picture, is confined almost exclusively to children, and indeed to those not yet of the school age. From about the third year[290] to the end of the sixth, when enforced mental exercise is begun, we find in children outspoken satisfaction in the voluntary exercise of reproduction. During this time mental feats almost unachievable by adults are performed, such as learning by heart thick books of nursery rhymes, long poems, interminable stories—acquirements which stir the proud parents with hope and mistaken conclusions as to the extraordinary mental endowments of their offspring. That children of this age often burden their minds with lists of unconnected and meaningless words and take pride in reciting them, proves that enjoyment of the mere ability to do it is the chief incentive. Thus, when she was in her sixth year, Marie G—— learned to count in French from one to one hundred, and enjoyed going over the numbers when she supposed herself to be unobserved, as when lying in bed in the morning. Carl Stumpf’s report of the prodigy Otto Poehler,[291] who at two years of age had learned to read fluently without teaching, is highly interesting in this connection. Stumpf says of the boy, then four years old and in other respects normal, having, indeed, a decided disinclination for systematic education when others tried to impose it on him: “Reading is his greatest passion, and the most important thing in his life.