represented as almost two to one and in the sixteenth year rose among
boys as four to one." The age of the greatest number of different
amusements is from ten to eleven, nearly fifteen being mentioned, but
for the next eight or nine years there is a steady decline of number,
and progressive specialisation occurs. The games of chase, which are
suggestive on the recapitulation theory, rise from eleven per cent in
boys of six to nineteen per cent at nine, but soon after decline, and
at sixteen have fallen to less than four per cent. Toys and original
make-believe games decline still earlier, while ball rises steadily
and rapidly to eighteen, and card and table games rise very steadily
from ten to fifteen in girls, but the increment is much less in boys.
"A third or more of all the amusements of boys just entering their
teens are games of contest--games in which the end is in one way or
another to gain an advantage one's fellows, in which the interest is n
the struggle between peers." "As children approach the teens, a
tendency arises that is well expressed by one of the girls who no
longer makes playthings but things that are useful." Parents and
society must, therefore, provide the most favorable conditions for the
kind of amusement fitting at each age. As the child grows older,
society plays a larger role in all the child's amusements, and from
the thirteenth year "amusements take on a decidedly cooeperative and
competitive character, and efforts are ore and more confined to the
accomplishments of some definite aim. The course for this period will
concentrate the effort upon fewer lines," and more time will be
devoted to each. The desire for mastery is now at its height. The
instinct is to maintain one's self independently and ask no odds. At
fourteen, especially, the impulse is, in manual training, to make
something and perhaps to cooeperate.

McGhee[7] collected the play preferences of 15,718 children, and found