Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/134

124 or less elaborate and in a few cases the initials of the pet's name were scratched or written on the stone.

Sixteen references were made to the use of stones for marking or writing with or upon. The scratching of pictures on sandstone was very much enjoyed. An old piece of slate found in the creek bed was often carefully saved and used in writing in preference to a well sharpened pencil. Colored stones that mark were valued highly and placed in the collection of valuable stones. These stones were used to mark on fences, rocks, or any other place that would receive the marks which were usually the child's own name or initials. Several children wrote their initials on stones and threw them away. This strange desire to write their names in as many places as possible seems to persist through the adolescent years.

Other uses of stones by one or more children were as follows: Six mentioned the use of stones to represent families; father was large stone, mother smaller one and children still smaller ones. Six children played guessing or other games with stones. Some awarded stones as prizes for good conduct; others rolled stones off of a ledge or down a plain; put them in tin cans and rattled them in giving the Indian war dance; fastened a stone to a handle and made a tomahawk; buried stones; used them as jewels; as a throne for a king; as means of representing trees and other plants; arranged them in concentric circles, squares and triangles; used sharp stone to cut down a cherry tree; used stones to scatter along a path so as to tell the way to return; or one would scatter stones and another would try to track her by them; and one little girl placed a stone beside a tree and went to it from day to day to see how fast it would grow.

This properly comes under children's collective instinct and as this has already been treated by Mrs. C. K. Burk, it will merely be touched upon here. Mrs. Burk has shown that among the things collected by the 1,200 and more children upon whom she reported, stones were collected by 18% of the boys and 15% of the girls. In the returns which the writer has examined over 50% of the children made stone collections; 175 girls and 46 boys. The chief points of attraction were color, shape, smoothness, brilliancy and beauty. Under shape the attributes mentioned most were smooth, flat, round. Under color, white, pink bright, brilliant, red, dark blue, yellow, sparkling, stained; those with holes in them were also attractive. 144 children collected stones on the account of color, 48 because of odd shapes, 38 because they were pretty, 24 because they were smooth, 10 because they were flat and 12 because