[180] Rosse observed two elephants procuring erection by entwining their
proboscides, the act being completed by one elephant opening his mouth and
allowing the other to tickle the roof of it. (I. Rosse, _Virginia Medical
Monthly_, October, 1892.)
[181] Féré, "Perversions sexuelles chez les animaux,"
_Revue
Philosophique_, May, 1897.
[182] Tillier, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, 1889, p. 270.
[183] Moll, _Libido Sexualis_, Bd. I, p. 76. The same author mentions
(ibid., p. 373) that parrots living in solitary confinement masturbate by
rubbing the posterior part of the body against some object until
ejaculation occurs. Edmund Selous ("Habits of the Peewit," _Zoölogist_,
April, 1902) suggests that the peewit, when rolling on the ground, and
exerting pressure on the anal region, is moved by a sexual impulse to
satisfy desire; he adds that actual orgasm appears eventually to take
place, a spasm of energy passing through the bird.
[184] Dr. J.W. Howe (_Excessive Venery, Masturbation, and Continence_,
London and New York, 1883, p. 62) writes of masturbation: "In savage lands
it is of rare occurrence. Savages live in a state of Nature. No moral
obligations exist which compel them to abstain from a natural
gratification of their passions. There is no social law which prevents
them from following the dictates of their lower nature.
Hence, they have
no reason for adopting onanism as an outlet for passions. The moral
trammels of civilized society, and ignorance of physiological laws, give
origin to the vice." Every one of these six sentences is incorrect or
misleading. They are worth quoting as a statement of the popular view of
savage life.
[185] I can recall little evidence of its existence among the Australian
aborigines, though there is, in the Wiradyuri language, spoken over a
large part of New South Wales, a word (whether ancient or not, I do not
know) meaning masturbation (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,
July-Dec., 1904, p. 303). Dr. W. Roth (_Ethnological Studies Among the
Northwest-Central Queensland Aborigines_, p. 184), who has carefully
studied the blacks of his district, remarks that he has no evidence as to
the practice of either masturbation or sodomy among them. More recently
(1906) Roth has stated that married men in North Queensland and elsewhere
masturbate during their wives' absence. As regards the Maori of New
Zealand, Northcote adds, there is a rare word for masturbation (as also at
Rarotonga), but according to a distinguished Maori scholar there are no
allusions to the practice in Maori literature, and it was probably not
practiced in primitive times. The Maori and the Polynesians of the Cook
Islands, Northcote remarks, consider the act unmanly, applying to it a
phrase meaning "to make women of themselves."
(Northcote, loc. cit., p.
232.)
[186] Greenlees, _Journal of Mental Science_, July, 1895. A gentleman long
resident among the Kaffirs of South Natal, told Northcote, however, that
he had met with no word for masturbation, and did not believe the practice
prevailed there.
[187] Hyades and Deniker, _Mission Scientifique du Cap Horn_, vol. vii, p.