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 late as the fiftieth week the note reads: "the child will not take the bottle at once when offered to him; takes it rather reluctantly, but handles it skilfully when it is once in his hands. Bottle is reversed at once if the nipple end is farthest from him, and if one purposely fixes the bottle in the child's hands in an impossible position for nursing, he speedily sets it right." (See Figs. 6 and 7, Plate II, showing the position of the hand for two periods [tenth and twenty-ninth months] when reaching for objects.)

We often wonder at the number of ideas the child acquires during his first three years; at his marvelous progress in learning to use his native tongue; at the wealth of his imagery; and at his intellectual resourcefulness in interpreting the world in which he finds himself. Hardly less marvelous is his progress in mastering the use of his hands, in learning to do things with them, a progress which ordinarily is not remarked. To be sure, we think of the child's struggles with the pencil when he begins to write or draw, of his first crude attempts to use the simpler carpenter's tools as the knife, saw, and hammer. But long before he reaches this relatively high stage in his development on the manual side, he must have learned a large number of hand-movements more difficult and often more complex than the child is called upon to perform in the kindergarten or primary-school years.