arious animals much lower
than man. The caressing of the antennae practiced by snails and various
insects during sexual intercourse is of the nature of a kiss. Birds use
their bills for a kind of caress. Thus, referring to guillemots and their
practice of nibbling each other's feet, and the interest the mate always
takes in this proceeding, which probably relieves irritation caused by
insects, Edmund Selous remarks: "When they nibble and preen each other
they may, I think, be rightly said to cosset and caress, the expression
and pose of the bird receiving the benefit being often beatific."[196]
Among mammals, such as the dog, we have what closely resembles a kiss, and
the dog who smells, licks, and gently bites his master or a bitch,
combines most of the sensory activities involved in the various forms of
the human kiss.

As practiced by man, the kiss involves mainly either the sense of touch or
that of smell. Occasionally it involves to some extent both sensory
elements.[197]

The tactile kiss is certainly very ancient and primitive. It is common
among mammals generally. The human infant exhibits, in a very marked
degree, the impulse to carry everything to the mouth and to lick or
attempt to taste it, possibly, as Compayre suggests,[198] from a memory of
the action of the lips protruded to seize the maternal nipple. The
affectionate child, as Mantegazza remarks,[199] not only applies inanimate
objects to its lips or tongue, but of its own impulse licks the people it
likes. Stanley Hall, in the light of a large amount of information he
obtained on this point, found that "some children insist on licking the
cheeks, necks, and hands of those they wish to caress," or like having
animals lick them.[200] This impulse in children may be associated with
the maternal impulse in animals to lick the young. "The method of licking
the young practiced by the mother," remarks S.S. Buckman, "would cause
licking to be associated with happy feelings. And, further, there is the
allaying of parasitical irritation which is afforded by the rubbing and
hence results in pleasure. It may even be suggested that the desire of the
mother to lick her young was prompted in the first place by a desire to
bestow on her offspring a pleasure she felt herself." The licking impulse
in the child may thus, it is possible, be regarded as the evanescent
manifestation of a more fundamental animal impulse,[201] a manifestation
which is liable to appear in adu