her, and presses her arms across her breast) being a more accurate rendering of the attitude of modesty.  But Stratz admits that when a surprised woman is gazed at for some time, she turns her head away, sinks or closes her eyes, and covers her pubes (or any other part she thinks is being gazed at) with one hand, while with the other she hides her breast or face.  This he terms the secondary expression of modesty. (Stratz, Die Frauenkleidung, third ed., p. 23.)

It is certainly true that the Medicean Venus merely represents an artistic convention, a generalized tradition, not founded on exact and precise observation of the gestures of modesty, and it is equally true that all the instinctive movements noted by Stratz are commonly resorted to by a woman whose nakedness is surprised.  But in the absence of any series of carefully recorded observations, one may doubt whether the distinction drawn by Stratz between the primary and the secondary expression of modesty can be upheld as the general rule, while it is most certainly not true for every case.  When a young woman is surprised in a state of nakedness by a person of the opposite, or even of the same, sex, it is her instinct to conceal the primary centers of sexual function and attractiveness, in the first place, the pubes, in the second place the breasts.  The exact attitude and the particular gestures of the hands in achieving the desired end vary with the individual, and with the circumstances.  The hand may not be used at all as a veil, and, indeed, the instinct of modesty itself may inhibit the use of the hand for the protection of modesty (to turn the back towards the beholder is often the chief impulse of blushing modesty, even when clothed), but the application of the hand to this end is primitive and natural.  The lowly Fuegian woman, depicted by Hyades and Deniker, who holds her hand to her pubes while being photographed, is one at this point with the Roman Venus described by Ovid (Ars Amatoria, Book II):—­

        “Ipsa Venus pubem, quoties velamnia ponit,
        Protegitur laeva semireducta manus.”

It may be added that young men of the lower social classes, at all events in England, when bathing at the seaside in complete nudity, commonly grasp the sexual organs with one hand, for concealment, as they walk up from the sea.

The sexual modesty of the female animal is rooted in the sexual periodicity of the female, and is an involuntary expression of the organic fact that the time for love is not now.  Inasmuch as this fact is true of the greater part of the lives of all female animals below man, the expression itself becomes so habitual that it even intrudes at those moments when it has ceased to be in place.  We may see this again illustrated in the bitch, who, when in heat, herself runs after the male, and again turns to flee, perhaps only submitting with much persuasion to his embrace.  Thus, modesty becomes something more