[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. Abbadé'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).