Could tell these different fig-trees
apart by the leaves and stems alone and without the fruit, he said that
each kind, even in winter, retained its peculiar "faccia" (face), but
that some varieties are more easy to distinguish than others. I enquired
into the mysteries of caprification, and learned that artificial
ripening by means of a drop of oil is practised with some of them,
chiefly the santillo, vollombola, pascarello and natalino. Then he
gave me an account of the prices for the different qualities and seasons
which would have astonished a grocer.
All of which proves how easy it is to misjudge of folks who, although
they do not know that Paris is the capital of France, yet possess a
training adapted to their present needs. They are specialists for things
of the grain-giving earth; it is a pleasure to watch them grafting vines
and olives and lemons with the precision of a trained horticulturist.
They talk of "governing" (governare) their soil; it is the word they
use in respect to a child.
Now figs are neither white nor black, but such is the terminology.
Stones are white or black; prepared olives are white or black; wine is
white or black. Are they become colour-blind because impregnated,
from earliest infancy, with a perennial blaze of rainbow hues -
colour-blinded, in fact; or from negligence, attention to this
matter not bringing with it any material advantage? Excepting that
sign-language which is profoundly interesting from an artistic and
ethnological point of view - why does not some scholar bring old lorio's
"Mimica degli Antichi" up to date? - few things are more worthy of
investigation than the colour-sense of these people. Of blue they have
not the faintest conception, probably because there are so few blue
solids in nature; Max Mueller holds the idea of blue to be quite
a modern acquisition on the part of the human race. So a cloudless sky
is declared to be "quite white." I once asked a lad as to the colour
of the sea which, at the moment, was of the most brilliant sapphire hue.
He pondered awhile and then said:
"Pare come fosse un colore morto" (a sort of dead colour).
Green is a little better known, but still chiefly connected with things
not out of doors, as a green handkerchief. The reason may be that this
tint is too common in nature to be taken note of. Or perhaps because
their chain of association between green and grass is periodically
broken up - our fields are always verdant, but theirs turn brown in
summer. Trees they sometimes call yellow, as do some ancient writers;
but more generally "half-black" or "tree-colour." A beech in full leaf
has been described to me as black. "Rosso" does not mean red, but
rather dun or dingy; earth is rosso.
