In the light of Bühler's theories the author examines the development of the function of representation in children. She differentiates four main modes of representation, illustrating her remarks from observation: (a) representation in behaviour, (b) building, (c) drawing, (d) the arbitrary arrangement of figures, and examines the successive genetic phases of these up to the sixth year of life. She is chiefly concerned with the last—the symbolic—mode of representation, because, when this has been mastered, the child is ready for school. Eighty per cent. of the three-year-olds with whom she experimented, apart from being able to speak (in speech representation is practised in giving names to objects, thus already in the first year), were capable of representing ideas by the arrangement at will of different characters. In the author's view, however, reading and writing should not generally be taught until the child is