nature of the sexual manifestation at this age.

A kind of rudimentary sexual intercourse between children, as
Bloch has remarked (_Beiträge_, etc., Bd. ii, p. 254), occurs in
many parts of the world, and is recognized by their elders as
play. This is, for instance, the case among the Bawenda of the
Transvaal (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1896, Heft 4, p. 364),
and among the Papuans of Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land, with the approval
of the parents, although much reticence is observed (id., 1889,
Heft 1, p. 16). Godard (_Egypte et Palestine_, 1867, p. 105)
noted the sexual play of the boys and girls in Cairo. In New
Mexico W.A. Hammond (_Sexual Impotence_, p. 107) has seen boys
and girls attempting a playful sexual conjunction with the
encouragement of men and women, and in New York he has seen boys
and girls of three and four doing the same in the presence of
their parents, with only a laughing rebuke. "Playing at pa and
ma" is indeed extremely common among children in genuine
innocence, and with a complete absence of viciousness; and is by
no means confined to children of low social class. Moll remarks
on its frequency (_Libido Sexualis_, Bd. i, p. 277), and the
committee of evangelical pastors, in their investigation of
German rural morality (_Die Geschlechtliche-sittliche
Verhältnisse_, Bd. i, p. 102) found that children who are not yet
of school age make attempts at coitus. The sexual play of
children is by no means confined to father and mother games;
frequently there are games of school with the climax in exposure
and smackings, and occasionally there are games of being doctors
and making examinations. Thus a young English woman says: "Of
course, when we were at school [at the age of twelve and earlier]
we used to play with one another, several of us girls; we used to