PASSING NOTES ON THE BIRDS OF ITALY. 249 



two of them ; one leans nine feet, the other five. They are 

 said to have been built by ancient noblemen, in the days 

 when a nobleman was not considered a nobleman without a 

 tower. 



In the afternoon, having nothing better to do, I took a 

 guide to the Cemetery, said to be the best in Italy. It is 

 very costly and elaborate, many of the beautiful sculptures 

 being by noted artistg. The best are those of pure white 

 Carara marble. Others of the second and third quality are 

 veined with grey. The place has received the name of the 

 Catacombs — spacious galleries, having three rows of vaults 

 on either side. For the smallest a man pays five pounds ; 

 for a larger one much more. These galleries are built in 

 the form of squares, and the plot of ground within is about 

 two acres. This is called "common ground," and the poor 

 are buried here (gratis) in trenches ; the males by them- 

 selves, the females by themselves, and the children by 

 themselves. After a lapse of not many years, their bones 

 are dug up and committed to great cave-like vaults, and 

 the ground is trenched and sown again, until a fresh crop of 

 these ghastly remains is ready to be harvested. In working 

 some excavatigns it was discovered that on this very site 

 there was, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, a necropolis, 

 or Etruscan city of the dead. 



From Bologna by Ancona to Brindisi is the well-known 

 route of all travellers for and from Egypt and India. 



The cultivated land was no longer divided into fields. 

 Rows of mulberry trees took the place of trim fences, gar- 

 nished with drooping vines, and these further south gave 

 way to the olive. What a different aspect the country 

 presented when I returned in the last week of June. Then 

 it was all waving fields of yellow corn, and scores and scores 

 of Italian husbandmen were coming down by train t© put 

 the sickle to it. 



For miles the iron road skirts the shore of the Adriatic 



