in a variety of forms which are really all reducible to the same principle.  Thus we are told in De Secretis Mulierum that to ascertain if a girl is seduced she should be given to eat of powdered crocus flowers, and if she has been seduced she immediately urinates.  We are here concerned with auto-suggestion, and it may well be believed that with nervous and credulous girls this test often revealed the truth.

A further test of virginity discussed by Schurig is the presence of modesty of countenance.  If a woman blushes her virtue is safe.  In this way girls who have themselves had experience of the marriage bed are said to detect the virgin.  The virgin’s eyes are cast down and almost motionless, while she who has known a man has eyes that are bright and quick.  But this sign is equivocal, says Schurig, for girls are different, and can simulate the modesty they do not feel.  Yet this indication also rests on a fundamentally sound psychological basis. (See “The Evolution of Modesty,” in the first volume of these Studies.)

In his Syllepsilogia (Section V, cap.  I-II), published in 1731, Schurig discusses further the anciently recognized signs of pregnancy.  The real or imaginary signs of pregnancy sought by various primitive peoples of the past and present are brought together by Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, bd. i, Chapter XXVII.

Both physically and psychically the occurrence of pregnancy is, however, a distinct event.  It marks the beginning of a continuous physical process, which cannot fail to manifest psychic reactions.  A great center of vital activity—­practically a new center, for only the germinal form of it in menstruation had previously existed—­has appeared and affects the whole organism.  “From the moment that the embryo takes possession of the woman,” Robert Barnes puts it, “every drop of blood, every fiber, every organ, is affected."[170]

A woman artist once observed to Dr. Stratz, that as the final aim of a woman is to become a mother and pregnancy is thus her blossoming time, a beautiful woman ought to be most beautiful when she is pregnant.  That is so, Stratz replied, if her moment of greatest physical perfection corresponds with the early months of pregnancy, for with the beginning of pregnancy metabolism is increased, the color of the skin becomes more lively and delicate, the breasts firmer.[171] Pregnancy may, indeed, often become visible soon after conception by the brighter eye, the livelier glance, resulting from greater vascular activity, though later, with the increase of strain, the face may tend to become somewhat thin and distorted.  The hair, Barnes states, assumes a new vigor, even though it may have been falling out before.  The temperature rises; the weight increases, even apart from the growth of the foetus.  The efflorescence of pregnancy shows itself, as in the blossoming and fecundated flower, by increased pigmentation.[172] The nipples with their