folk-dances of the Cossacks are usually violent and acrobatic, as is their life. Energy or dreaminess, fire or coolness, and a multitude of other racial qualities assert themselves automatically in a folk-dance. The list of forces that make and preserve a nation’s dances is incomplete without the addition of the powerful element of national pride, weakness or other peculiarities. On the contrary, in the Far East, in Japan, Java, China, etc., dancing is exclusively a motion of the hands and fingers alone. In ancient Rome dancing was predominantly the rhythmic motion of the body, with vibratory or rotatory movements of breast or flanks. The Stomach Dance of the Arabians betrays the wild passion of a nomadic desert race. According to Louis Robinson, dancing is an innate instinct that has an indirect bearing upon the existence of the human race. Robinson argues that throughout Nature instincts, like the organs of our bodies, are the product of the strict laws of evolution, and have been built up to meet some need. At some critical time in the past they had a certain survival value--i. e., they were capable of determining in the struggle for existence which individuals or tribes should go under and which should survive. This principle can be taken as one of the axioms which must be our pilots in every attempt to account for the faculties which each of us brings into the world, as distinct from those acquired in the life of the individual. Practically every savage people has elaborate dances and spends a good deal of time in such exercises. Among adults dancing takes the place of the play of children. When we come to analyze the play of all young creatures from the historical standpoint we find it forms part of an elaborate natural system of physical training. The perpetual motion of the kitten while it is awake is obviously a training for those accomplishments which in later life mean a livelihood. Such astonishing skill and agility as are shown by the cats in securing prey cannot be attained by any ready-made machinery like that of the dragon-fly or the mantis: they must be built up and manufactured. Herein the nervous mechanism of the mammalia has prevailed over the limited mechanical perfection of lower things such as reptiles, fish, and insects. Most of them can do some one thing or other supremely well, but the mammalia, with their better nervous system and receptive brains, can excel in many things. We, with our greater gifts of the same sort, are the most versatile and teachable of all; hence we prevail over the rest of creation. The kitten, the puppy, and the young savage, by their continual restless and organized activity, gain great advantage in certain movements necessary in after life, and foster the growth of the particular muscles which later on will be absolutely requisite in the serious business of holding their place in the world. Obviously such instincts would become out of date and inappropriate should the