Of the Finland seal, by the way, Dr. Guenther wrote: "The skin differs in
nothing from that of Phoca foetida. In the skull I observe that the
nasal bones are conspicuously narrower than in typical specimens from
the northern coasts. There is also a remarkable thinness of bone, a want
of osseous substance; but it is impossible to say whether this is due to
altered physical conditions or should be accounted for by the youth of
the specimen, or whether it is an individual peculiarity."
25. Winter 1882-1883; possibly later.
26. The centre of this usage, so far as Europe is concerned, seems to
have been the Caucasus.
27. I have been there since, and vainly endeavoured to track the legend
to its lair. Its only possible foundation is that I possessed the
ordinary tourists' map of the district.
28. Add to all the other varieties, now, the countless legions of the
guardie regie, which threaten to absorb the entire youth of Italy. At
this moment there is a distressing dearth of housing accommodation all
over the peninsula; in Rome alone, they say, apartments are needed for
10,000 practically homeless persons, and a mathematician may calculate
the number of houses required to contain them. How shall they ever be
built, if all the potential builders are loafing about in uniforms at
the public expense?
29. Some of these Beautiful Thoughts went through more than one edition.
30. From an old article: "I was pleased to observe on Ponza the relics
of a great pre-Roman civilization. Above the town, where the cemetery
now stands, is a likely site for a citadel, and on examining it from the
sea I noticed, sure enough, a few blocks of prehistoric structure of the
so-called Cyclopean type underneath a corner of the cemetery wall. There
is a portion in better preservation between the 'Baths of Pilate' and
the harbour, where a little path winds up from the sea. The blocks are
joined without mortar, and some of them are over a metre in length. This
megalithic wall may be taken to be contemporaneous with similar works of
defence found in various parts of Italy, but I believe its existence on
Ponza has not yet been recorded. Livy says that Volscians inhabited the
island till they were supplanted by the Romans, and a tradition
preserved by Strabo and Virgil locates here the palace of the
enchantress Circe, who transformed the companions of Ulysses into
bristly swine...." Some one may have anticipated me here again, as did
Salis-Marschlins in the eighteenth century with those roses of Passtum
whose disappearance Ramage, like every one else, laments - those roses
which I thought I was the first to re-discover. They grow on the spot in
considerable quantities, though one needs good eyes to see them. They
are not flourishing as of yore, being dwarfs not more than a few inches
in height. One which I carried away and kept three years in a pot and
six more in the earth grew to a length of about sixteen feet, and is
probably alive at this moment, I never saw a flower.
31. For the abject condition of these slaves (such they are) see Chapter
VII of The Roman Campagna by Arnaldo Cervesato.
32. Written in 1917.
33. D.H. Lawrence: Twilight in Italy.
34. The title Alone strikes me, on reflection, as rather an inapt one
for this volume. Let it stand!
*** END OF ALONE by Norman Douglas ***
