536 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tary contour soon emerges, and thus we get the transition to a 

 possible outlining of objects. With practice the child acquires 

 by the second or third year the usual stock in trade of the juve- 

 nile draughtsman, and can draw a sort of straight line, curved 

 lines, a roughish kind of circle or oval, as well as dots, and even 

 fit lines together at angles.* When this stage is reached we 

 begin to see attempts at real though rude likenesses of men, 

 horses, and so forth. These early essays are among the most 

 curious products of the child-mind. They follow standards and 

 methods of their own ; they are apt to get hardened into a fixed 

 conventional manner which may reappear even in mature years. 

 They exhibit with a certain range of individual difference a cu- 

 rious uniformity, and they have their parallels in what we know 

 of the first crude designs of the untutored savage. 



It has been wittily observed by an Italian writer on children's 

 art that they reverse the order of natural creation in beginning 

 instead of ending with man. It may be added that they start 

 with the most dignified part of this crown of creation, viz., the 

 human head. A child's first attempt to represent a man proceeds, 

 so far as I have observed, by drawing the front view of his head. 

 This he effects by means of a clumsy sort of circle with a dot 

 or two thrown in by way of indicating features in general. A 

 couple of lines may be inserted as a kind of support, which do 

 duty for both trunk and legs. The circular or ovoid form is, I 

 think, by far the most common. The square head in my collec- 

 tion appears only very occasionally and in children at school, who 

 presumably have had some training in draw- 

 ing horizontal and vertical lines. The accom- 

 panying example (Fig. 2) is the work of a 

 Jamaica girl of five, kindly sent me by her 

 teacher. 



This first attempt to outline the human 

 form is, no doubt, characterized by a high 

 degree of arbitrary symbolism. The use of 

 a rude form of circle to set forth the human 

 head reminds one of the employment by liv- 

 ing savage tribes of the same form as the 

 symbol of a house (hut ?), a wreath, and so 



FIG. 2. forth. Yet there is a measure of resemblance 



4 



* I am much indebted to Mr. Cooke for the sight of a series of early scribbles of his 

 little girl. Cf. Baldwin, Mental Development, chapter v, where some good examples of 

 early line-tracing are given. According to Baldwin, angles or zigzag come early, and are 

 probably due to the cramped, jerky mode of movement at this early stage. Preyer seems 

 to me wrong in saying that children can not manage a circular line before the end of the 

 third year (op. cit., p. 47). Most children who draw at all manage a loop or closed curved 

 line before this date. 



