TREASURE TROVE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 226, 21 June 1935, Page 5

TREASURE TROVE

Children and Collecting

The important thing to recognise about the collecting instinct in young children says a writer In the “Manchester Guardian,” Is that their concern is not primarily with what they collect; anything will do, the point being that there must be a lot of it —whatever “it” is—and that its component parts must be of a convenient size for small people to handle, but not to swallow. The appeal of collecting anything is that it yields such tangible results. There is a sense of something accomplished in having to-day ten or twenty of whatever it may be where yesterday one had only nine or nineteen, and number has so great a fascination for the young that, to count over a multitude of small objects, adding and taking away, is in itself an absorbing occupation. '.Phe question of how exactly to amass a collection is one which almost at once becomes crucial. There is no point in collecting anything—cigarette cards, postcards, coins, stamps—unless one takes the matter pretty seriously, and

taking it seriously is likely to involve a disconcerting amount of 'begging and swapping; how to emphasise the importance of a collection without allowing it to become a public nuisance is a problem which needs some solving. As vital as the problem of how to collect is that of how to keep what has been collected. Many children have an invincible objection to bestowing their treasure in such a way that they cannot sort it over whenever the fancy takes them; on this account they will not, if they, can help It, put cards and stamps in the albums which are so obviously their proper place, nor keep birds’ eggs, shells and coins in appropriate pigeon-holes. This makes things distinctly difficult since it is fatal to let a collection get astray in the toy cupboard or on the floor. There is one particularly “delicate" phase of collecting which is bound to come sooner or later, and that Is the collection of money. From one point of view this is, of course, highly desirable, but from another it is by no means so. since one gets immediately confronted with ways and means -which may include, besides begging, the most remarkable financial deals!