tors with
overwhelming intensity, all the more so if, as is probable, the craving is
to some extent the expression of a physiological need.

Sanford Bell, who has investigated the food impulses of children
in America, finds that girls have a greater number of likes and
dislikes in foods than boys of the same age, though at the same
time they have less dislikes to some foods than boys. The
proclivity for sweets and fruits shows itself as soon as a child
begins to eat solids. The chief fruits liked are oranges,
bananas, apples, peaches, and pears. This strong preference for
fruits lasts till the age of 13 or 14, though relatively weaker
from 10 to 13. In girls, however, Bell notes the significant fact
from our present point of view that at mid-adolescence there is a
revived taste for sweets and fruits. He believes that the growth
of children in taste in foods recapitulates the experience of the
race. (S. Bell, "An Introductory Study of the Psychology of
Foods." _Pedagogical Seminary_, March, 1904.)

The heightened nervous impressionability of pregnancy would appear to
arouse into activity those primitive impulses which are liable to occur in
childhood and in the unmarried girl continue to the nubile age. It is a
significant fact that the longings of pregnant women are mainly for fruit,
and notably for so wholesome a fruit as the apple, which may very well
have a beneficial effect on the system of the pregnant woman. Giles, in
his tabulation of the foods longed for by 300 pregnant women, found that
the fruit group was by far the largest, furnishing 79 cases; apples were
far away at the head, occurring in 34 cases out of the 99 who had
longings, while oranges followed at a distance (with 13 cases), and in the
vegetable group tomatoes came first (with 6 cases). Several women declared
"I could have lived on apples," "I was eating apples all day," "I used to
sit up in bed eating apples."[187] Pregnant women appear seldom to long
for the possession of objects outside the edible class, and it seems
doubtful whether they have any special tendency to kleptomania. Pinard has
pointed out that neither Lasegue nor Lunier, in their studies of
kleptomania, have mentioned a single shop robbery committed by a pregnant
woman.[188] Brouardel has indeed found such cases, but the object stolen
was usually a food.

A further significant fact connecting the longings of pregnant women wit