PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



penial bone the female has often a clitoridian bone; 

 nothing more clearly affirms the parallelism of these two 

 organs, whereof one serves only for pleasure, after hav- 

 ing been, perhaps in a long distant era, when man romped 

 among marine invertebrates, a real instrument of fecun- 

 dation. The greater labia, limiting the general orifice of 

 the vulva, exist only in woman and, less markedly, in 

 the female orang-outang. Circular in rodents, trans- 

 versal in the unique case of the hyena, a heteroclite 

 animal, the vulva is longitudinal in all other mammifers. 

 Completely imperforate in the mole the vagina is more 

 or less closed by a membrane, which the male penis tears 

 in first encounter, in women, and several quadrumanes, 

 certain small monkeys, the marmoset, certain carnivora, 

 the bear, hyena, white-bellied seal, the daman (nailed) ; it 

 is replaced in dog, cat, ruminants by an annular gripping 

 between the vagina and the vestibule. The maidenhead 

 is, therefore, not peculiar to human virgins, and there is 

 no glory in a privilege which one shares with the mar- 

 moset. 



Menstruation is found in quadrumanes, in bats; other 

 female mammals show an emission of blood, which is, 

 however, limited to the rutting season. The position 

 of teats is variable, as also their number, they are in 

 the groin in ruminants, solipedes, cetaces; ventral in 

 dogs, pigs; pectoral and always two in nearly all pri- 

 mates, chiroptera, elephants, and sirenians, who for this 

 reason, doubtless, reminded the sailors of the ancient 

 world of their women. 



Other particularities and correspondences are examined 

 in the next chapter which deals with the mechanism of 



