Interest in this problem on the part of parents, sociologists and paediatricians, among others, has grown of recent years. So much is this so that the casual observer might well conclude that there had been a real increase in backwardness, and that anxious parents now have a more genuine cause for anxiety on this score than was the case a generation ago. This view indeed is held by certain well established authorities in the fields of education and psychology, for example Burt and Professor Godfrey Thompson, who have expressed gloomy views about the intelligence of the nation. Moreover, considerable publicity by means of wireless broadcasts or otherwise has been given to these prognostications. It is not therefore surprising that many parents should be concerned as to whether their offspring will after all prove to be something less of a genius than they had anticipated. The smaller size of modern families is also a factor in increasing paternal anxiety. I say paternal advisedly, since it is more often the male parent, especially in middle-class circles, who has set his heart on his child being an infant prodigy. With only one string to his bow, the whole tension of paternal ambition is concentrated in a single object. Moreover in these days of compulsory examinations at the age of eleven, together with widespread coaching for the intelligence tests which form part of the examination, the unfortunate, innocent babe is barely able to lift a mug or a spoon when his rattle is whisked away and replaced by a host of constructional toys designed on similar lines to modern American intelligence tests. The slightest failure in performance or slackening of interest is liable to produce a state akin to panic in the proud parent, who has just been comparing notes about his prodigy with the owner of another (but naturally, somewhat inferior) budding genius next door.