[3] Jayne was the first to create a popular study of string figures built on academic papers from journals such as The Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.

She also personally recorded string figures from several native groups that were in attendance at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri.

[6] The book provided instructions on how to create 129 string figures that were identified by anthropologists studying traditional societies[7] such as those in Congo-Kasai[8] and the Caroline Islands.

One is appalled at any attempt at description of such a book, so simple and yet so complex, so slight in its purpose, so vast in its revelation, and when one has gone through these more than 400 pages and nearly a thousand pictures he learns that all of this is merely "an introduction," to a real study of string figures—games which are widespread among primitive peoples, and played by weaving on the hands a single loop of string in order to produce intricat patterns supposed to represent certain familiar objects.

While there is in this a purpose to inspire the collector's craze of cat's-cradle curiosities in all races and places, there is a higher purpose of interesting people in the fascination of these games that quicken intellectual activities along a different line from bridge whist, games in which young and old alike can participate.