Even this chaotic scribble shows almost from the beginning germs of formative elements, not merely in the fundamental line-elements, but also in the loops, and in the more abrupt changes of direction or angles. A tendency to draw a loop-like rudimentary contour soon emerges, and thus we get the transition to a possible outlining of objects. Miss Shinn gives a good example of an ovoid loop drawn by her niece in her hundred and ninth week.[233] With practice the child acquires by the second or third year the usual stock in trade of the juvenile draughtsman, and can draw a sort of straight line, curved lines, a roughish kind of circle or oval, as well as dots, and even fit lines together at angles.[234] When this stage is reached we begin to see attempts at real though rude likenesses of men, horses and so forth. These early essays are among the most curious products of the child-mind. They follow standards and methods of their own; they are apt to get hardened into a fixed conventional manner which may reappear even in mature years. They exhibit with a certain range of individual difference a curious uniformity, and they have their parallels in what we know of the first crude designs of the untutored savage. ----- Footnote 233: _Op. cit._, pt. ii., p. 97; “fifty-sixth week” is, she informs me, an error for hundred and ninth week. Footnote 234: I am much indebted to Mr. Cooke for the sight of a series of early scribbles of his little girl. _Cf._ Baldwin, _Mental Development_, chap. v., where some good examples of early line-tracing are given. According to Baldwin angles or zig-zag come early, and are probably due to the cramped, jerky mode of movement at this early stage. Preyer seems to me wrong in saying that children cannot manage a circular line before the end of the third year (_op. cit._, p. 47). Most children who draw at all manage a loop or closed curved line before this date. ----- _First Drawings of the Human Figure._ It has been wittily observed by an Italian writer on children’s art that they reverse the order of natural creation in beginning instead of ending with man.[235] It may be added that they start with the most dignified part of this crown of creation, _viz._, the human head. A child’s first attempt to represent a man proceeds, so far as I have observed, by drawing the front view of his head. This he effects by means of a clumsy sort of circle with a dot or two thrown in by way of indicating features in general. A couple of lines may be inserted as a kind of support, which do duty for both trunk and legs. The circular or ovoid form is, I think, by far the most common. The square head in my collection appears only very occasionally and in children _at school_, who presumably have had some training in drawing horizontal and vertical lines. The accompanying example (Fig. 2) is the work of a Jamaica girl of five, kindly sent me by her teacher. ----- Footnote 235: