Professed anthropologists have dealt with the subject, collecting evidence from many quarters, and in some cases attempting to draw general conclusions. Bastian's "Der Mensch der Geschichte"[43] and Herbert Spencer's Tables deserve special mention for their encyclopædic fulness of information regarding the distribution of abnormal sexuality and the customs of savage tribes.
In England an Essay appended to the last volume of Sir Richard Burton's "Arabian Nights" made a considerable stir upon its first appearance.[44] The author endeavoured to co-ordinate a large amount of miscellaneous matter, and to frame a general theory regarding the origin and prevalence of homosexual passions. His erudition, however, is incomplete; and though he possesses a copious store of anthropological details, he is not at the proper point of view for discussing the topic philosophically.[45] For example, he takes for granted that "Pederasty," as he calls it, is everywhere and always what the vulgar think it. He seems to have no notion of the complicated psychology of Urnings, revealed to us by their recently published confessions in French and German medical and legal works. Still his views deserve consideration.
Burton regards the phenomenon as "geographical and climatic, not racial." He summarises the result of his investigations in the following five conclusions.[46]
"(1) There exists what I shall call a 'Sotadic Zone,' bounded westwards by the northern shores of the Mediterranean (N. lat. 43°) and by the southern (N. lat. 30°). Thus the depth would be 780 to 800 miles, including meridional France, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and Greece, with the coast-regions of Africa from Morocco to Egypt.
"(2) Running eastward the Sotadic Zone narrows, embracing Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Chaldæa, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab, and Kashmir.
"(3) In Indo-China the belt begins to broaden, enfolding China, Japan, and Turkistan.
"(4) It then embraces the South Sea Islands and the New World, where, at the time of its discovery, Sotadic love was, with some exceptions, an established racial institution.
"(5) Within the Sotadic Zone the vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South of the limits here defined practise it only sporadically, amid the opprobrium of their fellows, who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation, and look upon it with the liveliest disgust."