why, and indeed how far, blushing is confined to the face.  Henle (Ueber das Erroethen) thought that we blush in the face because all nervous phenomena produced by mental states appear first in the face, owing to the anatomical arrangement of the nerves of the body.  Darwin (Expression of the Emotions) argued that attention to a part tends to produce capillary activity in the part, and that the face has been the chief object of attention.  It has also been argued, on the other hand, that the blush is the vestigial remains of a general erethism of sex, in which shame originated; that the blush was thus once more widely diffused, and is so still among the women of some lower races, its limitation to the face being due to sexual selection and the enhanced beauty thus achieved.  Fere once had occasion to examine, when completely nude, a boy of thirteen whose sexual organs were deformed; when accused of masturbation he became covered by a blush which spread uniformly over his face, neck, body and limbs, before and behind, except only the hands and feet.  Fere asks whether such a universal blush is more common than we imagine, or whether the state of nudity favors its manifestation. (Comptes Rendus, Societe de Biologie, April 1, 1905.) It may be added that Partridge mentions one case in which the hands blushed.

The sexual relationships of blushing are unquestionable.  It occurs chiefly in women; it attains its chief intensity at puberty and during adolescence; its most common occasion is some more or less sexual suggestion; among one hundred and sixty-two occasions of blushing enumerated by Partridge, by far the most frequent cause was teasing, usually about the other sex.  “An erection,” it has been said, “is a blushing of the penis.”  Stanley Hall seems to suggest that the sexual blush is a vicarious genital flushing of blood, diverted from the genital sphere by an inhibition of fear, just as, in girls, giggling is also very frequently a vicarious outlet of shame; the sexual blush would thus be the outcome of an ancestral sex-fear; it is as an irradiation of sexual erethism that the blush may contain an element of pleasure.[65]

Bloch remarks that the blush is sexual, because reddening of the face, as well as of the genitals, is an accompaniment of sexual emotion (Beitraege zur AEtiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II, p. 39).  “Do you not think,” a correspondent writes, “that the sexual blush, at least, really represents a vaso-relaxor effect quite the same as erection?  The embarrassment which arises is due to a perception of this fact under circumstances which are felt to be unsuited for such a condition.  There may arise the fear of awakening disgust by the exhibition of a state which is out of place.  I have noticed that such a blush is produced when a sufficiently young and susceptible woman is pumped full of compliments.  This blush seems accompanied by pleasure which does not always change to fear or disgust, but is felt