hich from any point of
view are incomparably inferior to the skin itself. (Cf. Stratz,
_Die Schoenheit des Weiblichen Koerpers_, Chapter XII.)

With reference to the extraordinary vitality of the skin,
emphasized by Woods Hutchinson, it may be added that, when
experimenting on the skin with the electric current, Waller found
that healthy skin showed signs of life ten days or more after
excision. It has been found also that fragments of skin which
have been preserved in sterile fluid for even as long as nine
months may still be successfully transplanted on to the body.
(_British Medical Journal_, July 19, 1902.)

Everything indicates, remark Stanley Hall and Donaldson ("Motor
Sensations in the Skin," _Mind_, 1885), that the skin is "not
only the primeval and most reliable source of our knowledge of
the external world or the archaeological field of psychology," but
a field in which work may shed light on some of the most
fundamental problems of psychic action. Groos (_Spiele der
Menschen_, pp. 8-16) also deals with the primitive character of
touch sensations.

Touch sensations are without doubt the first of all the sensory
impressions to prove pleasurable. We should, indeed, expect this
from the fact that the skin reflexes have already appeared before
birth, while a pleasurable sensitiveness of the lips is doubtless
a factor in the child's response to the contact of the maternal
nipple. Very early memories of sensory pleasure seem to be
frequently, perhaps most frequently, tactile in character, though
this fact is often disguised in recollection, owing to tactile
impression being vague and diffused; there is thus in Elizabeth
Potwin's "Study of Early Memories" (_Psychological Review_,
November, 1901) no separate group of tactile memories, and the
more elaborate investigation by Colegrove ("Individual Memories,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, January, 1899) yields no
decisive results under this head. See, however, Stanley Hall's
valuable study, "Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, April, 1898. Kuelpe has a
discussion of the psychology of cutaneous sensations (_Outlines
of Psychology_ [English translation], pp. 87 et seq.)

Harriet Martineau, at the beginning of her _Autobiography_,
referring to the vivid character of tactile s