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PREFACE

The papers which constitute this volume have all been printed in my journals, most of them in the Pedagogical Seminary, but are here revised, condensed, or amplified, and provided with up-to-date bibliographies on each topic by Dr. Theodate L. Smith, for whose efficiency and careful work I desire to express my heartiest acknowledgments. Material for several other volumes has been gathered and grouped, all of them in the same general field, but each in a different part of it, and with a unity of its own. These may be published later, if the success of this volume warrants the undertaking. For many years the special studies that have emanated from this department of Clark University have been planned with reference to bringing them into ultimate unity in such a way that when published in book form the relations between the different parts of the wide and rapidly extending domain of child study might be exhibited in a systematic way, and their manifold applications, not hitherto apparent to the public, and often not to the individual investigator, might be set forth. Such a series as the above might have borne the collective title of Chips from a Psycho-Genetic Laboratory."

The papers of this volume have least unity of any in the contemplated series, but are upon topics of most popular and perhaps practical interest. The first paper, "The Contents of Children's Minds on entering School," appeared almost twenty-five years ago, and is often referred to as marking the beginning of child study in America. It was suggested by a somewhat similar test made some years earlier by > Professor Lazarus upon a large group of children in Berlin.