Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, Vol 18, No 4
Articles in this issue
- L. V. Bertarelli announces the Touring's second propaganda volume for the Commissione «per il Bosco e per il Pascolo», written by prof. G. Di Tella of the Istituto Superiore Forestale di Vallombrosa and printed in 130,000 copies, on extinguishing torrents and reafforesting bare Italian mountainsides.
- Viscount H. M. de Mathuisieulx maps future tourist itineraries in Tripolitania, working west from Tripoli in three stages to Zanzur, Zauia and the ruins of Sabrata, then east over the Tarhuna plateau to Homs, Leptis Magna and the mouth of the Cinypso.
- On the rebuilding of St Mark's Campanile in Venice, which fell on 14 July 1902 and was raised again «dov'era e com'era» by Gaetano Moretti with the engineers Donghi, Ario and Lavezzari and professor Manfredi; includes Marin Sanudo's account of the golden angel of 1513 and the old bells that timed the Arsenal's working day.
- Thanks to the organisers of the Touring's winter tourist-sport meeting at Ponte di Legno: the cups given by count Martinoni of the Brescia section of the Club Alpino Italiano and by count Oldofredi, the Comitato Bresciano formed with on. Tovini, and the Winter Tourism Commission under col. Raffa of the 5th Alpini with dott. Moldenhauer.
- Ing. Igino Saraceni argues Italy should stop buying French aeroplanes, and surveys the home industry: Giovanni Caproni's works and flying school at Vizzola Ticino (whose monoplane took the Italian 100 km/h record with the aviator Cobioni), the SABA, and ing. Thouvenot's school at Cameri near Novara, newly capitalised at 180,000 lire.
- Paolo Revelli traces European knowledge of China from Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta's journey of 1325 through Matteo Ricci's mission of 1582 and the Jesuit cartographers, and reports the Italian concession at Tien-tsin, the first railways from Shanghai to Wusung, and Yuan Shi-kai's swearing-in as president on 10 March.
- Maria Pezzè-Pascolato's tale of an oak in the bosco di San Marco between Auronzo and the Misurina lake, felled under the forest inspector's red mark, rafted down to Perarolo and Venice and driven into the lagoon mud as a mooring pile, where it hears the battipali's chants and the ferrymen help the Cadorina girl Bettina home.
- Photo page from the French motoring tour showing Pesse on a Bugatti, Grandveau on a Ponette, Doutre on a Majola, Williams on a Violette, Bouville's Bedelix voiturette on the Côte de Montanglaust and the Reo, Benz and Roy teams.
- Vico Mantegazza's survey of the Balkan peninsula — Turkish retreat, the Orthodox pope and national churches, the rise of Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Romania, the Macedonian and Albanian revolts, and the Italian-built port of Antivari — closing on the fear that a Bulgarian-Turkish war would again convulse Europe.
- The Touring and the Federazione Italiana dei Consorzi Agrari renew their flowered-railway-station competition for 1912, restricted to Liguria, Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia; the 1911 gold medals went to Nervi, Vercelli and Pistoia, with 100-lire prizes to Bolzano, Bordighera, S. Remo and others.
- Thirty Touring direction signs lettered in Italian and Arabic have been erected at Bengasi under an agreement with the divisional command, among them the Berca-Bengasi caravan sign and a «Tenere la sinistra» plate for vehicles and pack animals.
- Photographs by the member dott. Giuseppe Wiget: a street in the Arab quarter of Tripoli, the arch of Septimius Severus, the vegetable market, the customs house, oxen being loaded, and the oasis vegetation at Derna.
- Tribute to Scott and Amundsen with a map of both South Polar routes, noting that Amundsen reached the pole on 14 December 1911 and anchored the Fram at Hobart on 7 March, and that he does not exclude Scott having reached it too.
- The magazine's monthly news department, running from aerology and aeronautics through railways, geography, geology, the navy, medicine, bridges and the V. C. A.
- Italy's airships are flying safely over Tripoli again after storm-wrecked hangars were rebuilt, but captain Mina's call for an aerological observatory beside the hangar remains unmet.
- 412 free-balloon ascents were made from the Aéro-Club de France park at Saint-Cloud in 1911; engineer Bode showed a 4.5-metre Hertzian-wave-steered airship model at Berlin; Emilio Dubonnet flew Condor III 1,954 km from Lamotte-Breuil to Sokolowska in 30 hours.
- Germany votes 9 million marks to decentralise military aviation and sets up a naval aviation commission at Danzig; the 1912 Gordon-Bennett cup goes to 200 km; Wilhelm II offers 50,000 marks for the best German aero engine.
- The Rome-Albano through tram opens, the Belluno-Longarone section of the Cadore railway is expected in July, the Porto Empedocle-Siculiana narrow-gauge section enters service, and New York's new Pennsylvania terminus is described alongside the still larger station planned for the New York Central.
- France counted 39,601,509 inhabitants at the census of 5 March 1911; the Franco-German treaty of 4 November 1911 moved the Kamerun-Congo boundary east; and notes on the Bumali, Pomo and pygmy Babinga of the Sangha valley, Argentina's adoption of time zones and Russanof's Novaya Zemlya expeditions.
- Prof. E. Mariani reports the Forno glacier in the upper Valtellina has retreated 897 metres between 1864 and 1911, and dott. H. Martin describes the Mousterian human skeleton found at La Quina in the Charente.
- Trials of the British battlecruiser Lion (26,800 tons, 70,000 HP) held 26 knots for 24 hours and touched 31.7 knots; the Queen Mary, the Japanese Kongo and Germany's Goeben are compared, with talk of 40,000-ton cruisers doing 35 knots.
- After senator prof. Pio Foà's lecture to the R. Società Italiana di Igiene, Milan is urged to set up a travelling anti-tuberculosis museum on the German, English and American model, packed in cases and sent wherever propaganda is wanted.
- The first stone has been laid for the bridge over the Marzeno carrying the realigned provincial road from Modigliana to Faenza.
- New V. C. A. committees are recognised at Piacenza and at Cologna Veneta, Serravalle Sesia, Varallo Sesia, Mirano and Portogruaro; Verona's presidency passes to dott. Rinaldi; the Valtellina detachment is placed first in the Turin shooting contest on appeal.
- The Pretore of Borgomanero acquitted ing. Tullio Chizzolini of Milan on 20 January 1912, holding that a speeding prosecution cannot proceed unless the report is served on the driver within eight days, as the Pretori of Verona, Busto Arsizio, Cavallermaggiore, Pavia and Pontedera had also ruled.
- Subscription list for the Touring's road signs, with gifts from provincial deputations and municipalities including 470 lire from the Società «Aemilia» of Bologna and 410 from the Deputazione Provinciale di Grosseto, bringing the total to L. 99,816.50 and 6,420 signs subscribed to 31 January 1912.
- The Touring's official announcements for the month, covering the prize draw for the 1911 recruiting members and the latest consular and medical appointments.
- Thirty-eight prizes — bicycles, cameras, binoculars and watches — were drawn at the Touring's offices on 28 February among the 111 recruiting members of 1911, and the gold medal of the hundred thousand fell to Nicolò Aprile of Genoa for the member Ferrando Davide.
- New consuls appointed at Bricherasio, Bengasi, Caltanissetta, Castiglione Pepoli, Galliate, Gubbio, Maratea, Portoferraio, Riva S. Vitale, Siracusa, Verona and Vische Canavese, with new consular doctors and lawyers and the retiring consuls.
- January's list of members awarded the silver medal of the Hundred Thousand for bringing in five new members between 1 June 1911 and January 1912.
- The 1,943 members who have each recruited ten new adherents and receive the artistic silver medal, listed from Arcangeli of Cerignola to Vitrotti of Gallarate.
- Giuseppe Borione of Turin, cap. Lionello Pellegrini of Viterbo, Alfredo Rappis of Andorno and Carlo Giuseppe Squintani of Arezzo take the gold medal for presenting a hundred new members each.
- January's list of members paying five years' subscription in advance — 30 lire, 40 from abroad — who receive the special silver-and-enamel badge and all the Touring's publications for the five years.
- Applicants for membership of the T. C. I. presented between 1 and 29 February 1912, listed as life and annual members by province from Bengasi and Bergamo to Venezia Giulia, and by country for Cuba, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and Asia.
- Membership stood at 96,773 annual members — 1,282 joined between 15 February and 15 March against 1,201 struck off — plus 5,295 life members, for a total of 102,068.