indicated by the fact that the general ticklishness of the body, which is so marked in children and in young girls, greatly diminishes, as a rule, after sexual relationships have been established.  Dr. Gina Lombroso, who investigated the cutaneous reflexes, found that both the abdominal and plantar reflexes, which are well marked in childhood and in young people between the ages of 15 and 18, were much diminished in older persons, and to a greater extent in women than in men, to a greater extent in the abdominal region than on the soles of the feet;[16] her results do not directly show the influence of sexual relationship, but they have an indirect bearing which is worth noting.

The difference in ticklishness between the unmarried woman and the married woman corresponds to their difference in degree of modesty.  Both modesty and ticklishness may be said to be characters which are no longer needed.  From this point of view the general ticklishness of the skin is a kind of body modesty.  It is so even apart from any sexual significance of tickling, and Louis Robinson has pointed out that in young apes, puppies, and other like animals the most ticklish regions correspond to the most vulnerable spots in a fight, and that consequently in the mock fights of early life skill in defending these spots is attained.

In Iceland, according to Margarethe Filhes (as quoted by Max Bartels, Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1900, ht. 2-3, p. 57), it may be known whether a youth is pure or a maid is intact by their susceptibility to tickling.  It is considered a bad sign if that is lost.

I am indebted to a medical correspondent for the following communication:  “Married women have told me that they find that after marriage they are not ticklish under the arms or on the breasts, though before marriage any tickling or touching in these regions, especially by a man, would make them jump or get hysterical or ‘queer,’ as they call it.  Before coitus the sexual energy seems to be dissipated along all the nerve-channels and especially along the secondary sexual routes,—­the breasts, nape of neck, eyebrows, lips, cheeks, armpits, and hair thereon, etc.,—­but after marriage the surplus energy is diverted from these secondary channels, and response to tickling is diminished.  I have often noted in insane cases, especially mania in adolescent girls, that they are excessively ticklish.  Again, in ordinary routine practice I have observed that, though married women show no ticklishness during auscultation and percussion of the chest, this is by no means always so in young girls.  Perhaps ticklishness in virgins is Nature’s self-protection against rape and sexual advances, and the young girl instinctively wishing to hide the armpits, breasts, and other ticklish regions, tucks herself up to prevent these parts being touched.  The married woman, being in love with a man, does not shut up these parts, as she reciprocates the advances that he makes; she no longer requires ticklishness as a protection against sexual aggression.”

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