530 THE TUSCAN MAREMMA. 
ures to remove it, and the growing political and commercial 
importance of the large towns in more healthful localities 
absorbed the attention of Government, and deprived the Ma- 
remma of its just share in the systems of physical improve- 
ment which were successfully adopted in interior and Northern 
Italy. 
Before any serious attempts were made to drain or fill up 
the marshes of the Maremma, various other sanitary experi- 
ments were tried. It was generally believed that the insalu- 
brity of the province was the consequence, not the cause, of its 
depopulation, and that, if it were once densely inhabited, the 
ordinary operations of agriculture, and especially the mainte- 
nance of numerous domestic fires, would restore it to its ancient 
healthfulness.* In accordance with these views, settlers were 
invited from various parts of Italy, from Greece, and, after the 
accession of the Lorraine princes, from that country also, and 
colonized in the Maremma. To strangers coming from soils 
and skies so unlike those of the Tuscan marshes, the climate 
was more fatal than to the inhabitants of the neighboring dis- 
tricts, whose constitutions had become in some degree inured to 
the local influences, or who at least knew better how to guard 
against them. The consequence very naturally was that the 
experiment totally failed to produce the desired effects, and 
was attended with a great sacrifice of life and a heavy loss to 
the treasury of the state. 
The territory known as the Tuscan Maremma, ora maritima, 
and when belonging to powerful lay lords they were almost as inviolable. 
The rights of fishery were a standing obstacle to every proposal of hydraulic 
improvement, and to this day large and fertile districts in Southern Europe 
remain sickly and almost unimproved and uninhabited, because the draining 
of the ponds upon them would reduce the income of proprietors who derive 
large profits by supplying the faithful, in Lent, with fish, and with various 
species of waterfowl which, though very fat, are, ecclesiastically speaking, 
meagre. 
* Macchiavelli advised the Government of Tuscany ‘‘ to provide that men 
should restore the wholesomeness of the soil by cultivation, and purify the air 
by fires.”,—SALVAGNOLI, Memorie, p. 111. 
