edition, p. 560) a lady states that this was done to her when a child, as also to other children, by dogs who, she said, showed signs of sexual excitement.  In this case there was also sexual excitement thus produced in the child, and after puberty mutual cunnilinctus was practiced with girl friends.  Guttceit (Dreissig Jahre Praxis, Theil I, p. 310) remarks that some Russian officers who were in the Turkish campaign of 1828 told him that from fear of veneral infection in Wallachia they refrained from women and often used female asses which appeared to show signs of sexual pleasure.

A very large number of animals have been recorded as having been employed in the gratification of sexual desire at some period or in some country, by men and sometimes by women.  Domestic animals are naturally those which most frequently come into question, and there are few if any of these which can altogether be excepted.  The sow is one of the animals most frequently abused in this manner.[51] Cases in which mares, cows, and donkeys figure constantly occur, as well as goats and sheep.  Dogs, cats, and rabbits are heard of from time to time.  Hens, ducks, and, especially in China, geese, are not uncommonly employed.  The Roman ladies were said to have had an abnormal affection for snakes.  The bear and even the crocodile are also mentioned.[52]

The social and legal attitude toward bestiality has reflected in part the frequency with which it has been practiced, and in part the disgust mixed with mystical and sacrilegious horror which it has aroused.  It has sometimes been met merely by a fine, and sometimes the offender and his innocent partner have been burnt together.  In the middle ages and later its frequency is attested by the fact that it formed a favorite topic with preachers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  It is significant that in the Penitentials,—­which were criminal codes, half secular and half spiritual, in use before the thirteenth century, when penance was relegated to the judgment of the confessor,—­it was thought necessary to fix the periods of penance which should be undergone respectively by bishops, priests and deacons who should be guilty of bestiality.

In Egbert’s Penitential, a document of the ninth and tenth centuries, we read (V. 22):  “Item Episcopus cum quadrupede fornicans VII annos, consuetudinem X, presbyter V, diaconus III, clerus II.”  There was a great range in the penances for bestiality, from ten years to (in the case of boys) one hundred days.  The mare is specially mentioned (Haddon and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, vol. iii, p. 422).  In Theodore’s Penitential, another Anglo-Saxon document of about the same age, those who habitually fornicate with animals are adjudged ten years of penance.  It would appear from the Penitentiale Pseudo-Romanum (which is earlier than the eleventh century) that one year’s penance was adequate for fornication