d was still kept in religious awe
of evil ways. The archdeacon had two daughters, both of whom he
brought up in great strictness, resolved that they should grow up
examples of virtue and piety. Our stables adjoined, and were
separated only by a thin wall in which was a doorway closed up by
some boards, as the two stables had formerly been one. One night
I had occasion to go to our stable to search for a garden tool I
had missed, and I heard a door open on the other side, and saw a
light glimmer through the cracks of the boards. I looked through
to ascertain who could be there at that late hour, and soon
recognized the stately figure of one of the daughters, F.F. was
tall, dark and handsome, but had never made any advances to me,
nor had I to her. She was making love to her father's mare after
a singular fashion. Stripping her right arm, she formed her
fingers into a cone, and pressed on the mare's vulva. I was
astonished to see the beast stretching her hind legs as if to
accommodate the hand of her mistress, which she pushed in
gradually and with seeming ease to the elbow. At the same time
she seemed to experience the most voluptuous sensation, crisis
after crisis arriving." My correspondent adds that, being
exceedingly curious in the matter, he tried a somewhat similar
experiment himself with one of his father's mares and experienced
what he describes as "a most powerful sexual battery" which
produced very exciting and exhausting effects. Naecke
(_Psychiatrische en Neurologische Bladen_, 1899, No. 2) refers to
an idiot who thus manipulated the vulva of mares in his charge.
The case has been recorded by Guillereau (_Journal de Medicine
Veterinaire et de Zootechnie_, January, 1899) of a youth who was
accustomed to introduce his hand into the vulva of cows in order
to obtain sexual excitement.

The possibility of sexual excitement between women and animals
involves a certain degree of sexual excitability in animals from
contact with women. Darwin stated that there could be no doubt
that various quadrumanous animals could distinguish women from
men--in the first place probably by smell and secondarily by
sight--and be thus liable to sexual excitement. He quotes the
opinions on this point of Youatt, Brehm, Sir Andrew Smith and
Cuvier (_Descent of Man_, second edition, p. 8). Mo