At eighteen months of age observation and imitative capacity will have made more complex pursuits possible. As a rule the objects which are most prized and which have most educative value are those which lend themselves best to the actions with which alone the child is familiar. Hence the supreme importance of the doll and the doll's perambulator. The doll will be treated exactly as the child is treated by the nurse. It will be washed, and dressed, and weighed, and put to bed in faithful reproduction of what the child has daily experienced. Dusting, and sweeping, and laying the table will be exactly copied. If a child has no opportunity of being familiar with horses, if he has not seen them fed, and watered, and groomed, and harnessed, he may not find any great satisfaction in a toy horse, or pay much attention to it, no matter how costly or realistic it may be. In the third year more precise tasks, such as stringing beads, drawing, and painting, will play their part, while at the same time the increased imaginative powers will give attraction to toy soldiers or a toy tea-service. Playing at shop, robbers, and rafts are developments of still later growth. In the child's games we recognise the instinct of imitation--playing with dolls, sweeping and dusting, playing at shop or visitors; the instinct of constructiveness--making mud pies and sand castles, drawing or whittling a stick; and the instinct of experiment--letting objects fall, rattling, hammering, taking to pieces. All this activity must be encouraged, never unduly repressed or destroyed. But whatever form it takes, the bulk of the play must be carried on without the intervention of grown-up persons, or it will lose its educative value and prove too exacting. If grown-up people attempt to take part, the child will lose interest in the play and turn his attention to them. Children differ very much in their attitude towards books. One child quite early in the second year will be happy poring over picture books, while another will seldom glance at the contents and finds pleasure only in turning over the pages, opening and shutting them, and carrying them from place to place. Such differences are natural enough and foreshadow perhaps the permanent characteristics that divide men and women, and produce in later life men of thought and men of action, women who are Marthas and women who are Marys. Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that there is danger in a training that is too one sided, and that books and toys have both their part to play in developing the powers of the child. All the activities of the child should be used in as varied a way as possible. The eye is but one doorway to knowledge and understanding, the ear is another, the hand a third.