PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



of their tail when they curl it between their legs, this is 

 sometimes a psychological gesture, female modesty or 

 refusal, sometimes a gesture of preservation. The move- 

 ments of Venus modest, of man coming naked from his 

 bath, have no other origin. Monkeys when they stop 

 moving about, place their hands on their sexual parts. 

 The Polynesians, before Christianity, had the custom 

 when standing upright, of holding theii scrotum in both 

 hands with the prong hanging between the fingers: the 

 posture of the wild dandy. Certain species lack scrotum 

 as Pliny had already remarked: Testes elephanto occulti. 

 In camels the testicles roll beneath the skin of the groin; 

 rats' testicles are internal, but emerge in the rutting sea- 

 son and assume an enormous development. Apes often 

 have the pouch-skin blue, red or green, like the other 

 bald parts of their bodies. 



Camels, dromedaries and cats have the end of the penis 

 bent backward (this explains the tom-cat's manner of 

 urination), the tip does not straighten itself or point for- 

 ward save in erection. Not only the prong but the 

 sheath of rodents points backward and ends near the anus, 

 and in front of it. The penis is slender in ruminants, 

 and in wild boar; thick and round in solipedes, elephant, 

 lamentin (sea-cow, manatee) ; thick and conic in the dol- 

 phin, cylindrical in rodents and primates. The gland, 

 which takes all intermediary forms between ball and 

 point, has in the rhinoceros the shape of a gross fleur-de- 

 lys. In the cats small spikes rise and point toward the 

 base, and in agouti and gerboa there are holding flanges 

 which grip the organs of the female. 



The prong of many mammifers, a real member, is held 

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