Meanwhile, another form of imitation is developing, _viz._, the production of semblances in things. Early illustrations of this impulse are the making of a river out of the gravy in the plate, the pinching of pellets of bread till they take on something of resemblance to known forms. One child, three years old, once occupied himself at table by turning his plate into a clock, in which his knife (or spoon) and fork were made to act as hands, and cherry stones put round the plate to represent the hours. Such table-pastimes are known to all observers of children, and have been prettily touched on by R. L. Stevenson.[221] ----- Footnote 221: _Virginibus Puerisque_, ‘Child’s Play’. ----- Such formative touches are, at first, rough enough, the transformation being effected, as we have seen, much more by the alchemy of the child’s imagination than by the cunning of his hands. Yet, crude as it is, and showing at first almost as much of chance as of design, it is a manifestation of the same plastic impulse, the same striving to produce images or semblances of things, which possesses the sculptor and the painter. In each case we see a mind dominated by an idea and labouring to give it outward embodiment. The more elaborate constructive play which follows, the building with sand and with bricks, with which we may take the first spontaneous drawings, are the direct descendant of this rude formative activity. The kindergarten occupations, most of all the clay-modelling, make direct appeal to this half-artistic plastic impulse in the child. In this imitative play we see from the first the tendency to set forth what is characteristic in the things represented. Thus in the acting of the nursery the nurse, the coachman and so forth are given by one or two broad touches, such as the presence of the medicine-bottle or its semblance, or of the whip, together, perhaps, with some characteristic manner of speaking. In this way child-play, like primitive art, shows a certain unconscious selectiveness. It presents what is constant and typical, imperfectly enough no doubt. The same selection of broadly distinctive traits is seen where some individual seems to be represented. There is a precisely similar tendency to a somewhat bald typicalness of outline in the first rude attempts of children to form semblances. This will be fully illustrated presently when we examine their manner of drawing.