“a man who has already several wives may be seen with an infant of two or three weeks on his lap, caressing and kissing it as his wife.  Wives of four to six years we found occasionally (in China, Guzuate, Ceylon, and Brazil); from seven to nine years on they are no longer rare, and the years from ten to twelve are a widely prevalent marriage age.”

The amorous savage betrays his inferiority to animals not only in his cruel maltreatment of girls before they have reached the age of puberty,[119] but in his ignorance, in most cases, of the simplest caresses and kisses for which we often find corresponding acts in birds and other animals.  The nerves of primitive men are too coarse for such a delicate sensation as labial contact, and an embrace would leave them cold.  An African approximation to a kiss is described by Baker (Ismailia, 472).  He had liberated a number of female slaves, and presently, he says, “I found myself in the arms of a naked beauty, who kissed me almost to suffocation, and, with a most unpleasant embrace, licked both my eyes with her tongue.”  If we may venture an inference from Mr. A.H.  Savage Landor’s experience[120] among the aboriginal Ainos of Yezo (Japan), one of the lowest of human races, we may conclude that, in the course of evolution, biting preceded kissing.  He had made the acquaintance of an Ainu maiden, the most lovely Ainu girl he had ever come across.  They strolled together into the woods, and he sketched her picture.  She clutched his hand tightly, and pressed it to her chest: 

“I would not have mentioned this small episode if her ways of flirting had not been so extraordinary and funny.  Loving and biting went together with her....  As we sat on a stone in the semi-darkness she began by gently biting my fingers without hurting me, as affectionate dogs often do their masters; she then bit my arm, then my shoulder, and when she had worked herself up into a passion she put her arms round my neck and bit my cheeks.  It was undoubtedly a curious way of making love, and when I had been bitten all over, and was pretty tired of the new sensation, we retired to our respective homes.”

Sensuality has had its own evolution quite apart and distinct from that of love.  The ancient Greeks and Romans, and the Orientals, especially the Hindoos, were familiar, thousands of years ago, with refinements and variations of lust beyond which the human imagination cannot go.  According to Burton,

“Kornemannus in his book de linea amoris, makes five degrees of lust, out of Lucian belike, which he handles in five chapters, Visus, Colloquium, Convictus, Oscula, Tactus—­sight, conference, association, kisses, touch.”

All these degrees are abundantly illustrated in Burton, often in a way that would not bear quotation in a modern book intended for general reading.