290 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



and in ivory. Mosaic, filigree and goldsmith's work similarly continue 

 to maintain their place in the hands of small makers. The making 

 of musical instruments — almost exclusively harmonicas — is likewise 

 much in vogue with country folk. Toy-making cannot compare in 

 quality with what is turned out in Germany, but it is popular 

 and keeps many a hand busy, more particularly in the Mantovano. 

 Dried and artificial flowers also occupy not a few hands, partly for 

 sacred purposes. Pipe-making — more particularly for mariners and 

 fisher-folk — is well distributed over all Italy, from the north down 

 to Sicily; and shoes of all kinds, including wooden ones, issue 

 freely from rural domestic workshops, where the hand that has held 

 the scythe seeks a welcome change in making them. Italy would 

 not be Italy without ceramic wares, often made in very good taste 

 and of high quality, being turned out in the villages, pretty well in 

 the whole of the country, with a distinct local impress upon them. 

 A quite peculiar industry carried on in Italy — necessarily by hand, 

 because repeated experiments instituted for carrying it on by 

 machinery have utterly failed — is that of manufacturing a par- 

 ticularly durable and tough fibre from the broom and gorse which 

 grow wild in great profusion in Tuscany, Calabria and Basilicata. 

 The broom has to be steeped first in boiling and afterwards in cold 

 flowing river water, and otherwise treated in a peculiar way, but 

 the fibre produced is greatly valued as standing any amount of wear. 

 We have plenty of broom and gorse growing to no purpose on our 

 waste and common lands, but only to look pretty — " unprofitably 

 gay," as Oliver Goldsmith put it — and to be admired by lovers of 

 the beautiful, such as Linnaeus, who, on seeing the plant in flower 

 when landing in England, is reported to have fallen on his knees to 

 thank the Almighty for having created a thing of so much beauty. 

 During the Peninsular War, in default of oats, our cavalry horses 

 were fed upon broom or gorse well crushed, and in the 'sixties gorse 

 growing was recommended in Ireland for feeding purposes. The 

 question is, whether we might not now take a wrinkle out of the 

 Italian skin to turn this weed to profitable account. Another 

 peculiar by-occupation for rural folk in Italy now much in vogue 

 is the catching of river crab. This is a favourite and seemingly 

 paying occupation in Sesto Florentino. The crabfish have to be 

 trapped or potted in their holes at a peculiar stage, just after 

 casting their skin. Looking at what is done, all in all, there seems 

 to be no sign of the dying out of small industry. 



Among ourselves, likewise, there is more small trade than is 

 generally assumed. When, in 1882, I set out, in what was then my 



