accompanied in Europe by that of softness of flesh, effacement of form, and defect of elasticity in the outlines.  It would be a mistake thus to represent the women of Turkey in general, where all seek to become fat.  It is certain that the women of the East, more favored by Nature, preserve longer than others the firmness of the flesh, and this precious property, joined to the freshness and whiteness of their skin, renders them very agreeable.  It must be added that in no part of the world is cleanliness carried so far as by the women of the East."[145]

The special characteristics of the feminine hips and buttocks become conspicuous in walking and may be further emphasized by the special method of walking or carriage.  The women of some southern countries are famous for the beauty of their way of walk; “the goddess is revealed by her walk,” as Virgil said.  In Spain, especially, among European countries, the walk very notably gives expression to the hips and buttocks.  The spine is in Spain very curved, producing what is termed ensellure, or saddle-back—­a characteristic which gives great flexibility to the back and prominence to the gluteal regions, sometimes slightly simulating steatopygia.  The vibratory movement naturally produced by walking and sometimes artificially heightened thus becomes a trait of sexual beauty.  Outside of Europe such vibration of the flanks and buttocks is more frankly displayed and cultivated as a sexual allurement.  The Papuans are said to admire this vibratory movement of the buttocks in their women.  Young girls are practiced in it by their mothers for hours at a time as soon as they have reached the age of 7 or 8, and the Papuan maiden walks thus whenever she is in the presence of men, subsiding into a simpler gait when no men are present.  In some parts of tropical Africa the women walk in this fashion.  It is also known to the Egyptians, and by the Arabs is called ghung.[146] As Mantegazza remarks, the essentially feminine character of this gait makes it a method of sexual allurement.  It should be observed that it rests on feminine anatomical characteristics, and that the natural walk of a femininely developed woman is inevitably different from that of a man.

In an elaborate discussion of beauty of movement Stratz summarizes the special characters of the gait in woman as follows:  “A woman’s walk is chiefly distinguished from a man’s by shorter steps, the more marked forward movement of the hips, the greater length of the phase of rest in relation to the phase of motion, and by the fact that the compensatory movements of the upper parts of the body are less powerfully supported by the action of the arms and more by the revolution of the flanks.  A man’s walk has a more pushing and active character, a woman’s a more rolling and passive character; while a man seems to seek to catch his fleeing equilibrium, a woman seems to seek to preserve the equilibrium she has reached....  A woman’s walk is beautiful