=A Trait Common to us All.=--The doctrine of the tendency of mankind to develop the like fancies and ideas at the like stage of intellectual infancy was mentioned by Mr. E. W. Brabrook in his presidential address before the Anthropological Section of the British Association, as a generalization for which we are fast accumulating material in folklore. It is akin to the generalization that individual savage races present in their intellectual development a marked analogy to the condition of the earlier races of mankind. The fancies and ideas of the child resemble closely the fancies and ideas of the savage and the fancies and ideas of primitive man. Mrs. Gomme has found that a great number of children's games consist of dramatic representations of marriage by capture and marriage by purchase, and that the idea of exogamy is distinctly embodied in them. There can be little doubt that they go back to a high antiquity, and there is much probability that they are founded upon customs actually existing, or just passing away, at the time they were first played. Upon the same principle, if we view children's stories in their wealth of details, we shall deem it impossible that they could have been disseminated over the world otherwise than by actual contact of the several peoples with each other. But if we view them in their simplicity of idea, we shall be more apt to think that the mind of man naturally produces the same result under like circumstances, and that it is not necessary to postulate any communication between the peoples to account for their identity. It does not surprise us that the same complicated physical operations should be performed by far-distant peoples without any communication with each other; why should it be surprising that mental operations, not nearly so complex, should be produced in the same order by different peoples without any such communication?