Garden_ describes forty forms, as well as six different kinds of 

movement during coitus. The Eastern books of this kind are, on 

the whole, superior to those that have been produced by the 

Western world, not only by their greater thoroughness, but by the 

higher spirit by which they have often been inspired. 

The ancient Greek erotic writings, now all lost, in which the 

modes of coitus were described, were nearly all attributed to 

women. According to a legend recorded by Suidas, the earliest 

writer of this kind was Astyanassa, the maid of Helen of Troy. 

Elephantis, the poetess, is supposed to have enumerated nine 

different postures. Numerous women of later date wrote on these 

subjects, and one book is attributed to Polycrates, the sophist. 

Aretino--who wrote after the influence of Christianity had 

degraded erotic matters perilously near to that region of 

pornography from which they are only to-day beginning to be 

rescued--in his _Sonnetti Lussuriosi_ described twenty-six 

different methods of coitus, each one accompanied by an 

illustrative design by Giulio Romano, the chief among Raphael's 

pupils. Veniero, in his _Puttana Errante_, described thirty-two 

positions. More recently Forberg, the chief modern authority, has 

enumerated ninety positions, but, it is said, only forty-eight 

can, even on the most liberal estimate, be regarded as coming 

within the range of normal variation. 

The disgrace which has overtaken the sexual act, and rendered it 

a deed of darkness, is doubtless largely responsible for the fact 

that the chief time for its consummation among modern civilized 

peoples is the darkness of the early night in stuffy bedrooms 

when the fatigue of the day's labors is struggling with the 

artificial stimulation produced by heavy meals and alcoholic 

drinks. This habit is partly responsible for the indifference or 

even disgust with which women sometimes view coitus. 

Many more primitive peoples are wiser. The New Guinea Papuans of 

Astrolabe Bay, according to Vahness (_Zeitschrift fuer 

Ethnologie_, 1900, Heft 5, p. 414), though it must be remembered 

that the association of the sexual act with darkness is much 

older than Christianity, and connected with early religious 

notions (cf. Hesiod, _Works and Days_, Bk. II), always have 

sexual intercourse in the open air. The hard-working women of the 

Gebvuka and Buru Islands, again, are too tired for coitus at 

night; it is carried out in the day time under the trees, and the 

Serang Islanders also have coitus in the woods (Ploss and 

Bartels, Das _Weib_, Bk. i, Ch. XVII). 

It is obviously impracticable to follow these examples in modern 

cities, even if avocation and climate permitted. It is also 

agreed that sexual intercourse should be followed by repose. 

There seems to be little doubt, however, that the early morning 

and the daylight are a more favorable time than the early night. 

Conception should take place in the light, said Michelet 

(_L'Amour_, p. 153); sexual intercourse in the darkness of night 

is an act committed with a mere female animal; in the day-time it 

is union with a loving and beloved individual person. 

This has been widely recognized. The Greeks, as we gather from 

Aristophanes in the _Archarnians_, regarded sunrise as the 

appropriate time for coitus. The South Slavs also say that dawn 

is the time for coitus. Many modern authorities have urged the 

advantages of early morning coitus. Morning, said Roubaud