THE NATURAL 



up by an interior bone, formed at the cost of the con- 

 junctive partition which separates the two hollow cham- 

 bers. This penial bone is found in many quadrumanes, 

 chimpanzees, orang-outangs, most carnivora, dogs, 

 wolves, felines, martin, otter, badger, among rodents, 

 beaver, seal, and cetaceous animals; it is lacking in 

 ruminants, pachyderms, insectivora, toothless animals. 

 In man one sometimes finds a trace of it in the form of 

 a slender prismatic cartilage. In the enormous penis of 

 the whale it resembles a bell-clapper. The penial bone 

 diminishes the erectile capacity of the prong in stopping 

 the development of the hollow chambers, but it assures 

 the rigidity of the member, obtained in the other penial 

 type by the inflow of blood which causes the swelling. 

 Man ought to have the penial bone; he has lost it in the 

 course of ages, and this is doubtless fortunate, for a 

 permanent rigidity, or one too easily obtained would 

 have increased, to madness, the salacity of his species. 

 It is perhaps for this reason that great apes are rare, 

 although they are strong and agile. This view would be 

 confirmed if the penial cartilage were found regularly in 

 very lustful men or with a certain frequency among 

 human races most addicted to eroticism. 



The penis is found in woman in the form of clitoris. 

 This is almost as voluminous as a true penis in quad- 

 rumanes; it is atrophied in other species. It varies in- 

 dividually in women, certain of them being in this 

 respect quadrumanes. Sometimes the clitoris is pierced 

 for the passage of the urethra (certain apes and the mole) ; 

 a slight trace of this meatus is seen at the head of the 

 woman's clitoris. In species whose males possess a 

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