_Musical talent._ Children differ in musical talent, both in degree and in kind. One normal child may be twenty-five, fifty, or one hundred times as sensitive as another normal child in matters of time, in matters of pitch, in matters of loudness, and in matters of tone quality. The normal child may be very high in one of these four musical traits and low in another. Let me illustrate how these traits may be observed very early in a very highly musical child. Playing with a little girl eleven months old, I noticed that she responded to the music over the radio. I put a simple two-step on the victrola, and she marked the time correctly by a free sympathetic swinging of the arms. I changed this to waltz time, and she picked up the rhythm. As she could not yet stand on her feet, I held her on all fours, and then she shimmied with her trunk. Was that child musical? I could give one positive answer. She had a splendid sense of rhythm and urge for rhythmic action. As I watched her in succeeding years, she very early developed original dances, and at the age of four gave delight in original "shawl dances." Her speech very early was beautifully inflected. Her speech was also very early characterized by fine and meaningful modulations in loudness for emphasis and meaning. She gave early evidence of power to imitate different sounds. Of course, the less musical a child is by nature, the more difficult it is to find early evidences of this sort. We do not need measuring instruments so much as we need training of teachers and parents to an understanding of what constitutes musical capacities so that we can observe the child critically in his early natural responses. By the age of eight or ten these specific capacities will become more conspicuous, and at that age the competent psychologist in music can analyze and measure talents reliably. _Musical education._ When and how should musical education begin? It should begin in the earliest infancy by giving the child a musical environment suitable to elicit his response. This means not simply the hearing of formal music, but, far more significantly, a sympathetic response to the child's natural vocal expressions at each level, even to the making of sounds of all kinds. The child from the first needs a sympathetic audience. It is not so much how beautifully the mother sings as how sympathetically she responds to the beginning croonings of the infant; and this sympathetic enjoyment includes recognition and encouragement for the hearing of all sounds around, whether animate or inanimate. The mother's first task is to be a good listener.