sex who are not widely different in age, though
usually older. The most comprehensive study of the matter has
been made by Sanford Bell in America on a basis of as many as
2,300 cases (S. Bell, "A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love
Between the Sexes," _American Journal Psychology_, July, 1902).
Bell finds that the presence of the emotion between three and
eight years of age is shown by such actions as hugging, kissing,
lifting each other, scuffling, sitting close to each other,
confessions to each other and to others, talking about each other
when apart, seeking each other and excluding the rest, grief at
separation, giving gifts, showing special courtesies to each
other, making sacrifices for each other, exhibiting jealousy. The
girls are, on the whole, more aggressive than the boys, and less
anxious to keep the matter secret. After the age of eight, the
girls increase in modesty and the boys become still more
secretive. The physical sensations are not usually located in the
sexual organs; erection of the penis and hyperaemia of the female
sexual parts Bell regards as marking undue precocity. But there
is diffused vascular and nervous tumescence and a state of
exaltation comparable, though not equal, to that experienced in
adolescent and adult age. On the whole, as Bell soundly
concludes, "love between children of opposite sex bears much the
same relation to that between adults as the flower does to the
fruit, and has about as little of physical sexuality in it as an
apple-blossom has of the apple that develops from it." Moll also
(op. cit. p. 76) considers that kissing and other similar
superficial contacts, which he denominates the phenomena of
contrectation, constitute most frequently the first and sole
manifestation of the sexual impulse in childhood.

It is often stated that it is easier for children to preserve
their sexual innocence in the country than in the town, and that
only in cities is sexuality rampant and conspicuous. This is by
no means true, and in some respects it is the reverse of the
truth. Certainly, hard work, a natural and simple life, and a
lack of alert intelligence often combine to keep the rural lad
chaste in thought and act until the period of adolescence is
completed. Ammon, for instance, states, though without giving
definite evidence,