said that if in any year it was
found that the quails avoided any one of the islands, the reason would be
that there were too many people on it. Finally, I was told by another
native that when the quails were going north in the spring of 1906 the
wind suddenly changed and blew most of them into Trapani itself, and
people picked them up by hundreds in the streets. It does not matter, of
course, so long as one gets the quails for supper, but if one really did
want to know, one would have as much difficulty as in finding out how
Orlando got hold of la Durlindana and where it originally came from.

The student from Castelvetrano was still there with his melancholy eyes,
studying philosophy. He said he found the mountain more suitable for his
purpose than his native town because it was more tranquil. I had been at
Castelvetrano, but had not noticed that it was a particularly noisy
place, indeed, I could no more have distinguished between the
tranquillity of Castelvetrano and that of the mountain than between the
acute and the grave supertonic.

The next time I met this student he had completed his studies and was
employed as a clerk in the Italian railway station at Chiasso, the
frontier town on the S. Gottardo, at an annual salary of 1,080 lire,
which is about 43 pounds 4s. He could hardly have been sent to a station
more remote from his native town. He had had a holiday of twelve days,
and had gone home to embrace his adorata mamma. The government gave him
a free pass, so he travelled by rail, crossing from Reggio to Messina,
and it took him forty-six hours. When he arrived at Castelvetrano he was
so knocked up by the journey and the change of air that he was obliged to
go to bed, where he remained till it was time for him to get up and
return to Chiasso, and this means that he was in bed for more than a
fortnight, because his holiday was extended to twenty days in
consideration of his illness. He was quite contented about his position
and prospects and told me these facts without any complaint. On the
whole, Mount Eryx would appear to be not such a bad school for
philosophers: nevertheless, when one considers the large part played in
evolution by the inherited desire of the organism to live beyond its
income, one may doubt whether it is good for a country's progress that
many of its men should be so philosophically contented with so little.
They do not, however, include the whole of the population, for Italy
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