ments to prove that clocks and watches might be good substitutes for the Ave Maria were useless, and he remained stanch to his idea that England must be a wretched place without the Ave Maria "Si dove sta male in Inghilterra senza l'Ave Maria."

Twelve o'clock brought a welcome ar- | twenty-four o'clock, as we say here, we rival - lunch from the villa. Grape-pick- leave off work; and at one o'clock of ing is a capital sharpener of the appetite. night (an hour after sunset) it rings again We were soon reclining sub tegmine so that we may remember our dead and fagi-round a steaming dish of risotto say an Ave for them." All our argucon funghi, and a knightly sirloin of roast beef, which would have done honour to old England. A big fiasco (a large bottle bound round with reeds or straw, and holding three ordinary bottles) of last year's red wine was soon emptied, welltempered, I should say, with water from the neighbouring well. At a little distance the labourers in the vineyard were enjoying the unwonted luxury of a big wooden bowl full of white beans crowned with polpetti, little sausages of minced meat

and rice.

We first gathered all the white grapes. These were transferred from our small baskets to big ones, placed at the end of each row of vines. These bigger baskets were then carried on men's backs to the villa, where the grapes were laid out to dry in one of the towers, on stoje, great trays made of canes. Here they are exposed to sun and air for some weeks, when they are used for making the vin santo. After the white grapes were gathered, we fell to on the black, of the choice kinds, the "San Giovese," the "Aleatico," the "Colorino," and the "Occhio di Pernice." These also were destined to be exposed on stoje in the same manner. They are used as governo, that is to say, when the new wine is racked for the first time these choice black grapes are put in, so as to cause another fermentation. They at once deepen the colour of the wine and clear it. How melancholy the vines looked stripped of their grapes! The glorious white and golden, and pink and deep red bunches had given a beauty to the landscape which one did not realize until they were gone, and the poor vines stood bare. In our discussions about the progress of our work, the time of day often came in question. The old fattore was very anxious to know how we in England knew the hour, as he had heard that our churches did not ring the Ave Maria at midday or in the evening. He had doubtless a settled conviction that we were little better than heathens, but was too polite to say so right out. We explained that we had abundance of both big clocks and little watches; but he answered, "Ma che" (with a horizontal wave of the hand) "I have a watch too. I set it by the Ave Maria, and hardly ever use it. At midday, when the Ave Maria rings, we know we are to eat; and when we hear it at sundown,

At last the beautiful great white oxen, with their large, soft, black eyes, and with tassels of red and yellow worsted dangling about the roots of their horns and over their cool moist noses, came to the edge of the vineyard drawing a large vat (tino) fixed on the cart. Into this all the remaining grapes were thrown. A handsome young lad of sixteen, after tucking up his trousers and washing his feet in a bucket of water drawn from the well close by, jumped atop of the vat and lustily stamped down the contents, singing as he plied his purple-stained feet:

Bella bellina, chi vi ha fatto gli occhi ? Che vi gli ha fatti tanto innamorati ? Da letto levereste gli ammalati, Di sotto terra levereste i morte. Tanto valore e tanta valoranza! Vostri begli occhi son la mia speranza.* Of such tender sentiment and musical sound "roughs." These songs are most of them are the songs of the Tuscan the composition, both words and airs, of the peasants and artisans who sing them. The hills round Pistoja and the streets of Florence ring with an ever-renewed outpour of such sweet and simple song.

his fine breed of oxen, and told us the The padrone prides himself much on old Tuscan proverb, "Chi ha carro e buoi, fa bene i fatti suoi." When the last load of grapes was carted off we returned to the villa, where we found all hands busy in the great courtyard of the fattoria † on one side of the villa, emptying the grapes and must out of the vats with wooden bigoncie, high wooden pails, without handles. These are carried on men's shoulders, and their contents poured into immense vats (tini) ranged all round

My lovely charmer, who hath made thine eyes,
That fill our bosoms with such ecstasies?
Their glance would draw the sick man from his bed,
Or haply pierce the tomb and raise the dead.
Oh! my sweet love, thy beauty and thy worth
Are all my hope and all my joy on earth.

+ The fattoria comprehends the farm buildings, cellars, granaries, bailiff's dwellings, etc., attached to a villa, just as in the Roman times the villa rustica was attached to the villa urbana.

or acquarello, half-wine, not at all bad, but of course of insufficient body to keep through the summer. For this there is no want of demand at the villa. Besides the rations of the workpeople, there are the "poveri del buon Dio." In Tuscany there are no almshouses or poorhouses, save in the chief towns. Most villas have one or two days in the week when alms are distributed to all who come and ask. Here the gathering of poor occurs every Monday and Thursday at ten in the morning. A hunch of bread, a glass of half-wine, and five centimes are doled out to every appli cant, and on Christmas-day any one who brings a fiasco has it filled with mezzo vino, and gets half a loaf of bread and half a pound of uncooked meat. Such has been the custom, I am told, at this villa, for many hundred years.

the courtyard under covered arcades. In and the vinaccia is once more pressed in our wine-shed (tinaia) there are about the wine-press. This gives mezzo vino, fifty of these, containing from five to fifty butts each, besides three large square reservoirs of stone, each holding three hundred barrels. The bubbling and boiling of the fermenting wine fills the air, and the smell is almost strong enough to get drunk upon. The men often do get tipsy, if they remain too long treading the grapes, or drawing off the new wine. But here it is an article of faith that the perfume of the must is the best medicine, and people bring weakly children to tread the grapes and remain in the tinaia to breathe the fume-laden air and eat of the fresh grapes; for at vintagetime no peasant or padrone refuses grapes to any one who asks. They say that il buon Dio has given them plenty, and why should they in their turn not give to those who have nothing? I suppose this universal readiness to give is one reason why Our happy holiday vintaging lasted for there is so little stealing here. You see five days, and then we went to help the vines full of fruit close to the roads, and vintaging of one of the contadini of the quite unprotected by any sort of fence, padrone. This family had been on the esand yet no one of the country-side ever tate for two hundred and eighty years. takes them. There are, it is true, certain | All their vines were trained Tuscan fashmalfamati villages, whose inhabitants ion on maples, and we had the help of ladhave the reputation of thieves, and against these and pilferers from the large towns the vineyards are guarded by men armed with guns, with which they keep popping the night through. At times you see twenty or thirty poor people standing quietly looking on, until called up to receive their dole of grapes, with which they go away happy, with their graceful "Dio ve ne renda merito." At home they will This is, in rough outline, the system of mix water with the must they squeeze out mezzeria, or métayer (half-and-half) tenof their basket, or apronful, of such un- ure, still universal in Tuscany. Like all grudged gifts, and make mezzo vine or human things, it has two sides, and may acquarello (water and wine fermented to-be condemned as the most backward, or gether), for the winter. The same thing is done on a large scale at many fattorie This mixture of wine and water is distributed to the poor in winter, and is the common drink of the workmen about the villa. After the first good wine is drawn off from the vats, the vinaccia (skins, grape-stones, and stalks) is put into the wine-press and the second wine pressed out. This wine is good, but considerably rougher, from the larger amount of tannin, due to the skins and stalks, than the wine which is drawn from off the vats after fermentation without any agency of the press. After passing through the press, the clots of vinaccia are again put into the vats, and water is poured upon them. In eight or ten days a fresh fermentation takes place,

ders and steps to gather the grapes. Half the grapes, and indeed half of all the produce of the land-grain, pumpkins, flax, fruit, or wine, belongs to the padrone, who pays all the taxes and buys the cattle. The contadino pays no rent for his house, which the padrone keeps in repair. The peasant gives the labour, and the master finds the capital.

defended as the most patriarchal and wholesome of systems, binding landlord and tenant in the bond of an obviously common interest, and encouraging the closest and most familiar relations between the two. When the landlord is intelligent, active, and judicious, he may become a centre of enlightenment and improvement to his tenantry; but all his attempts must be made with the most cautious discretion, or he will infallibly frighten, and perhaps alienate, his tenantry, who are thorough conservatives, and love stare super antiquas vias. Thus the best commentary on the "Georgics" is still agriculture in action in Tuscany, a passing peep into one of whose most pleasing chapters has been attempted in this paper. JANET ROSS.

BY FRANCIS GALTON, F.R.S.

THE exceedingly close resemblance attributed to twins has been the subject of many novels and plays, and most persons have felt a desire to know upon what basis of truth those works of fiction may rest. But twins have many other claims to attention, one of which will be discussed in the present memoir. It is, that their history affords means of distinguishing between the effects of tendencies received at birth, and of those that were imposed by the circumstances of their after lives; in other words, between the effects of nature and of nurture. This is a subject of especial importance in its bearings on investigations into mental heredity, and I, for my part, have keenly felt the difficulty of drawing the necessary distinction whenever I tried to estimate the degree in which mental ability was, on the average, inherited. The objection to statistical evidence in proof of its inheritance has always been: "The persons whom you compare may have lived under similar social conditions and have had similar advantages of education, but such prominent conditions are only a small part of

those that determine the future of each

man's life. It is to trifling accidental cir-
cumstances that the bent of his disposi-
tion and his success are mainly due, and
these you leave wholly out of account-
in fact, they do not admit of being tabu-
lated, and therefore your statistics, how
ever plausible at first sight, are really of
very little use." No method of enquiry
which I have been able to carry out -
and I have tried many methods is
wholly free from this objection. I have
therefore attacked the problem from the
opposite side, seeking for some new
method by which it would be possible to
weigh in just scales the respective effects
of nature and nurture, and to ascertain
their several shares in framing the dispo-
sition and intellectual ability of men.
The life-history of twins supplies what I
wanted. We might begin by enquiring
about twins who were closely alike in boy;
hood and youth, and who were educated
together for many years, and learn whether
they subsequently grew unlike, and, if so,

In my "English Men of Science," 1874, p. 12, I treated this subject in a cursory way. It subsequently occurred to me that it deserved a more elaborate en

quiry, which I made, and of which this paper is a result.

what the main causes were which, in the opinion of the family, produced the dissimilarity. In this way we may obtain much direct evidence of the kind we want; but we can also obtain yet more valuable evidence by a converse method. We can enquire into the history of twins who were exceedingly unlike in childhood, and learn how far they became assimilated under the influence of their identical nurtures; having the same home, the same teachers, the same associates, and in every other respect the same surroundings.

circulars of enquiry to persons who were My materials were obtained by sending either twins themselves or the near relations of twins. The printed questions were in thirteen groups; the last of them asked for the addresses of other twins known to the recipient who might be likely to respond if I wrote to them. This happily led to a continually widening circle of correspondence, which I pursued until enough material was accumulated for a general reconnaissance of the subject.

There is a large literature relating to twins in their purely surgical and physiological aspect. The reader interested in this should consult "Die Lehre von den Zwillingen," von L. Kleinwächter, Prag. 1871; it is full of references, but it is also disfigured by a number of numerical misfound any book that treats of twins from prints, especially in p. 26. my present point of view.

I have not

The reader will easily understand that the word "twins" is a vague expression, which covers two very dissimilar events; the one corresponding to the progeny of animals that have usually more than one young at a birth, and the other corresponddue to two germinal spots in a single ing to those double-yolked eggs that are

ovum.

find a curious discontinuity in my results. The consequence of this is, that I One would have expected that twins would commonly be found to possess a certain average likeness to one another; that a few would greatly exceed that degree of likeness, and a few would greatly fall short of it; but this is not at all the case. Twins may be divided into three groups, so distinct that there are not many intermediate instances; namely, strongly alike, moderately alike, and extremely dissimilar. When the twins are a boy and a girl, they are never closely alike; in fact, their ori gin never corresponds to that of the abovementioned double-yolked eggs.

I have received about eighty returns of cases of close similarity, thirty-five of which

entered into many instructive details. In on their music-teacher when one of them a few of these not a single point of differ- wanted a whole holiday; they had their ence could be specified. În the remain- lessons at separate hours, and the one girl der, the colour of the hair and eyes were sacrificed herself to receive two lessons on almost always identical; the height, the same day, while the other one enjoyed weight, and strength were generally very herself. Here is a brief and comprehennearly so, but I have a few cases of a sive account: "Exactly alike in all, their notable difference in these, notwithstand-schoolmasters never could tell them apart; ing the resemblance was otherwise very at dancing-parties they constantly changed near. The manner and address of the partners without discovery; their close thirty-five pairs of twins is usually de- resemblance is scarcely diminished by scribed as being very similar, though there age." The following is a typical schooloften exists a difference of expression boy anecdote. Two twins were fond of familiar to near relatives but unperceived playing tricks, and complaints were freby strangers. The intonation of the voice quently made; but the boys would never when speaking is commonly the same, but own which was the guilty one, and the it frequently happens that the twins sing complainants were never certain which of in different keys. Most singularly, that the two he was. One head master used one point in which similarity is rare is the to say he would never flog the innocent handwriting. I cannot account for this, for the guilty, and another used to flog considering how strongly handwriting runs both. No less than nine anecdotes have in families, but I am sure of the fact. I reached me of a twin seeing his or her have only one case in which nobody, not reflection in a looking-glass, and addresseven the twins themselves, could distin- ing it, in the belief it was the other twin in guish their own notes of lectures, etc.; person. I have many anecdotes of misbarely two or three in which the hand-takes when the twins were nearly grown writing was undistinguishable by others up. Thus: "Amusing scenes occurred and only a few in which it was described at college when one twin came to visit the as closely alike. On the other hand, I other; the porter on one occasion refusing have many in which it is stated to be un- to let the visitor out of the college gates, like, and some in which it is alluded to as for, though they stood side by side, he the only point of difference. professed ignorance as to which he ought to allow to depart."

One of my enquiries was for anecdotes as regards the mistakes made by near relatives, between the twins. They are numerous, but not very varied in charac

ter.

When the twins are children, they have commonly to be distinguished by ribbons tied round their wrist or neck; nevertheless the one is sometimes fed, physicked, and whipped by mistake for the other, and the description of these little domestic catastrophes is usually given to me by the mother, in a phraseology that is somewhat touching by reason of its seriousness. I have one case in which a doubt remains whether the children were not changed in their bath, and the presumed A is not really B, and vice versa. In another case an artist was engaged on the portraits of twins who were between three and four years of age; he had to lay aside his work for three weeks, and, on resuming it, could not tell to which child the respective likenesses he had in hand belonged. The mistakes are less numerous on the part of the mother during the boyhood and girlhood of the twins, but almost as frequent on the part of strangers. I have many instances of tutors being unable to distinguish their twin pupils. Thus, two girls used regularly to impose

Children are usually quick in distinguishing between their parent and his or her twin; but I have two cases to the contrary. Thus, the daughter of a twin says: "Such was the marvellous similarity of their features, voice, manner, etc., that I remember, as a child, being very much puzzled, and I think, had my aunt lived much with us, I should have ended by thinking I had two mothers." The other, a father of twins, remarks: "We were extremely alike, and are so at this moment, so much so that our children up to five and six years old did not know us apart."

I have four or five instances of doubt during an engagement of marriage. Thus: "A married first, but both twins met the lady together for the first time, and fell in love with her there and then. A managed to see her home and to gain her affection, though B went sometimes courting in his place, and neither the lady nor her parents could tell which was which." I have also a German letter, written in quaint terms, about twin brothers who married sisters, but could not casily be distinguished by them.* In the well-known novel by Mr. I take this opportunity of withdrawing an anec

Wilkie Collins of "Poor Miss Finch," the | but that it is quite possible that it may be due to the appearance of qualities inherited at birth, though dormant, like gout, in early life. To this I shall recur.