seen; sometimes, entirely unknown.  The orgasm occurs at the most erotic part of the dream, the physical and psychical running parallel.  This most erotic or suggestive part of the dream was very often quite an innocent looking incident enough.  As, for example:  while passing a strange young woman, overtaken on the street, she calls after me some question.  At first, I pay no heed, but when she calls again, I hesitate whether to turn back and answer or not—­emission.  Again, walking beside a young woman, she said, ‘Shall I take your arm?’ I offered it, and she took it, entwining her arm around it, and raising it high—­emission.  I could feel stronger erection as she asked the question.  Sometimes, a word was enough; sometimes, a gesture.  Once emission took place on my noticing the young woman’s diminished finger-nails.  Another example of fetichism was my being curiously attracted in a dream by the pretty embroidered figure on a little girl’s dress.  As an illustration of the strange metamorphoses that occur in dreams, I one night, in my dream (I had been observing partridges in the summer) fell in love with a partridge, which changed under my caresses to a beautiful girl, who yet retained an indescribable wild-bird innocence, grace, and charm—­a sort of Undina!”

These experiences may be regarded as fairly typical of the erotic dreams of healthy and chaste young men.  The bird, for instance, that changes into a woman while retaining some elements of the bird, has been encountered in erotic dreams by other young men.  It is indeed remarkable that, as De Gubernatis observes, “the bird is a well-known phallic symbol,” while Maeder finds ("Interpretations de Quelques Reves,” Archives de Psychologie, April, 1907) that birds have a sexual significance both in life and in dreams.  The appearance of male organs in the dream-woman is doubtless due to the dreamer’s greater familiarity with those organs; but, though it occurs occasionally, it can scarcely be said to be the rule in erotic dreams.  Even men who have never had connection with a woman, are quite commonly aware of the presence of a woman’s sexual organs in their erotic dreams.

Moll’s comparison of nocturnal emissions of semen with nocturnal incontinence of urine suggests an interesting resemblance, and at the same time seeming contrast.  In both cases we are concerned with viscera which, when overfilled or unduly irritable, spasmodically eject their contents during sleep.  There is a further resemblance which usually becomes clear when, as occasionally happens, nocturnal incontinence of urine persists on to late childhood or adolescence:  both phenomena are frequently accompanied by vivid dreams of appropriate character. (See e.g.  Ries, “Ueber Enuresis Nocturna,” Monatsschrift fuer Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene, 1904; A.P.  Buchan, nearly a century ago, pointed out the psychic element in the experiences of young persons who wetted the bed, Venus sine