Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/132

122 superposed. Bach of these will be discussed in the order given.

It is evident that stones enter largely into the play of children. In nearly all the returns, including 281 girls and IOT boys from 5 to 9 years of age, were found statements such as these, "I liked to play with stones in my childhood." "I played much with stones. ' ' There were reported more than thirty different uses made of stones. Their use in making playhouses was most prominent, it being mentioned in one hundred and twenty-two reports. The houses are very simply represented and usually consist of only one or two rooms; but in a few cases four or five rooms were mentioned. The walls are merely rows of stones on the ground with blank spaces for doors and windows, and single rows of stones to represent the rooms. In only four per cent, of the cases were the stones superposed and an effort made to enclose the rooms on all sides and construct a roof. Thus we see again that the child's conception of a house is not very clear and is easily satisfied. This will be illustrated again in the other parts of this paper. A few quotations will show what was done:

F., at 7. "Made outline of house with stones, leaving space for door and windows, and left stone to knock on when any one wanted to come in."

F., at 6. "Marked off the extent of my playhouse with stones placed end to end."

F., at 8. "Marked off playhouse with white stones, also rooms."

The houses were rarely large enough for the children to enter them. The merest hint of walls and rooms was entirely satisfactory for a complete house. Two sides and one end often sufficed for a house. In fifteen cases mention is made of dividing lines or partition walls within the houses to separate rooms. One girl reports that she built a playhouse with walls four layers wide and two feet high and representing a real house in number of rooms. Four houses were built like caves and were called cave houses. One boy said, "I made a cave house out of stones and some boys claimed it as theirs and I had to drive them out." Whenever a house was large enough they would always crawl into it, as is shown by the following typical case: "Built playhouse which was simply stone walls with cornstalks for roof into which we often crawled."

The houses were supplied with furniture and kitchen utensils in 44 cases. Smooth, flat stones were used as tables and chairs for tea parties. Various shaped stones and granite chips were used for dishes. Beds for dolls were made of stones in one corner of the room. Ovens and furnaces were mentioned several times. They were built by placing flat stones on