ffection which women are apt to display towards their pet dogs
or cats. In most cases of this affection there is certainly no
sexual element; in the case of childless women, it may rather be
regarded as a maternal than as an erotic symbolism. (The excesses
of this non-erotic zoophilia have been discussed by Fere,
_L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, pp. 166-171.)

Krafft-Ebing considers that complete perversion of sexual attraction
toward animals is radically distinct from erotic _zoophilia_. This view
cannot be accepted. Bestiality and _zooerastia_ merely present in a more
marked and profoundly perverted form a further degree of the same
phenomenon which we meet with in erotic _zoophilia_; the difference is
that they occur either in more insensitive or in more markedly degenerate
persons.

A fairly typical case of _zooerastia_ has been recorded in America by
Howard, of Baltimore. This was the case of a boy of 16, precociously
mature and fairly bright. He was, however, indifferent to the opposite
sex, though he had ample opportunity for gratifying normal passions. His
parents lived in the city, but the youth had an inordinate desire for the
country and was therefore sent to school in a village. On the second day
after his arrival at school a farmer missed a sow which was found secreted
in an outhouse on the school grounds. This was the first of many similar
incidents in which a sow always took part. So strong was his passion that
on one occasion force had to be used to take him away from the sow he was
caressing. He did not masturbate, and even when restrained from
approaching sows he had no sexual inclination for other animals. His
nocturnal pollutions, which were frequent, were always accompanied by
images of wallowing swine. Notwithstanding careful treatment no cure was
effected; mental and physical vigor failed, and he died at the age of
23.[41]

It is, however, somewhat doubtful whether we can always or even usually
distinguish between zooerastia and bestiality. Dr. G.F. Lydston, of
Chicago, has communicated to me a case (in which he was consulted) which
seems fairly typical and is instructive in this respect. The subject was a
young man of 21, a farmer's son, not very bright intellectually, but very
healthy and strong, of great assistance on the farm, very capable and
industrious, such a good farm hand that his father was unwilling to send
him away and to lose his services. There was no histo