* * * * * * * * * * *
1. There exists a fine one, but you must go to San Remo to see it.
2. Discovered, according to Corsi, in 1547, and not to be confounded
with the yet more beautiful black and yellow Rhodian marble of the
ancients.
3. See North American Review, September, 1913. Ramage's Calabrian tour
of 1828, by the way, was an extremely risky undertaking. The few
travellers who then penetrated into this country kept to the main roads
and never moved without a military escort. One of them actually hired a
brigand as a protection.
4. Sometimes at this season there is not the smallest trickle in the
stream-bed - mere disconnected pools to show where the river was, and
will be. Then you may walk across it, even in Florence. Grant Duff says
he has seen the Arno "blue." So have I: a hepatic blue.
5. It afterwards passed into the hands of the German Crown Prince.
6. He was afterwards imprisoned for this, and has since died.
7. I am told the Florentines at no period adopted the method of the
Parisians, and that I am also wrong in saying that the older monuments
are in better condition than the new ones. We live and learn.
8. The late Henry Maudsley. He says, in one of his letters, "... I am
writing without due consideration of the interesting point. But this
possible explanation occurs to me: children are active motor machines,
always restless and moving when not asleep. When asleep, the motor
tendencies, being not quite passive, translate themselves into the
dreaming consciousness of motion, pleasant or painful, according to
bodily states pleasing or disturbing. As the muscles are almost passive
in sleep, the outlet is into dreaming activity - into dreams of flying
when bodily states are pleasant, into falling down precipices, etc.,
when they are out of sorts. This is quite a hasty reflection...."
9. "The Prison. A Dialogue." By H. B. Brewster. (Williams and Norgate,
1891.)
10. Parkstone, Dorset. July 19, 1894. "Many thanks for your reference to
Schopenhauer's remarks on Recognition Marks, which I thought I was the
first to fully point out. It is a most interesting anticipation. I do
not read German, but from what I have heard of his works he was the last
man I should have expected to make such an acute suggestion in Natural
History."
11. Written during the U-boat scare and food-restrictions.
12. Fecit! He poisoned himself with hydrocyanic acid on the 4th
November, 1920.
13. This is the same gentleman who informs us, on page 166, "I have
lived, however, very temperately, avoiding much wine." We learn from the
Dictionary of National Biography that he was born in 1803; he must
therefore have been twenty-five years old when he bemused the
coastguard. Only twenty-five; and already at this stage. We are further
told that he was tutor to somebody's son. Unhappy child!
14. Not all of them are true thistles. Abbade's Guide to the Abruzzi
(1903) enumerates 1476 plants from this region.
15. Manifestly unfair, all this. For the rest, the critic, in speaking
of a plot, may have meant what young ladies call by that name - a love
intrigue, in which case he is to be blamed solely for misuse of a good
word. I am consoled by the New York Dial calling my plot "rightly
filmy." Nobody could have expressed it better.
16. Three spring months, at Florence, had been spent in making a
scientific collection of local imprecations - abusive, vituperative or
profane expletives; swear-words, in short - enriched with elaborate
commentary. I would gladly print this little study in folk-lore as an
appendix to the present volume, were it fit for publication.
17. Since this was written, the gospel of imperialism has made
considerable progress in the peninsula.
18. This is a survival of the Greek kakkabos. Gargiuli and others have
garnered Hellenic derivations among the place-names here, and to their
list may be added that of the rock on which stood the villa of Pollius
Felix; it is now known as Punta Calcarella, but used to be called
Petrapoli; pure Greek: Pollio's rock. There is still a mine of such
material to be exploited by all who care to study the vernacular. The
giant euphorbia, for instance, common on these hills, is locally known
as "totomaglie"; pure Greek again: tithymalos.
19. Query: whether there be no connection between brachycephalism and
this modern deification of machinery?
20. Robert L. Bowles, M.D. "Sunburn on the Alps" (Alpine Journal,
November, 1888) and "The Influence of Light on the Skin" (British
Journal of Dermatology, No. 105, Vol. 9).
21. It has now been cleaned - with inevitable results.
22. Maupassant himself was partial to scents. See his valet's diary.
23. Since this was written (1917) the condition of these beasts has
improved. Somebody now feeds them - which could hardly have been expected
during those stressful times of war, when bread barely sufficed for the
human population. They are also fewer in numbers. Their owners, I fancy,
can afford to keep them at home once more.
24. This is my last (7 July, 1894) and somewhat mysterious letter from
the old fellow. "The question you ask is one of great ornithological
importance and I believe has never been worked out, but I am absolutely
afraid to ask any questions in the British Museum, as they jump at an
idea and cut the ground from under the original man's feet. This I
regret to say is my experience. I have been asked what does it matter
who makes the discovery? I reply, 'Render unto Caesar, etc.' If you are
going to work it out, keep it dark. The British Museum have not the
necessary specimens - in this country I believe it is not known how the
change takes place. I tried some years ago to work it out with live
specimens, but failed because I could not get young birds.
