The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-04-14
THE MILAN NOSE CONTEST.


 ian Respect for Big Noses.
 The nose has at all periods of their history possessed a pecliar significance for Italians. As symbol if intelli- gence it figures in familiar speech an- cient and modern, a homo nasutissi- mus being Seneca's equivalent for a very clever man and Naso name held in honor by the Otacilian, Octavian and Voconian' gems, while Nasica was a cognomen of the Scipios, one of whom, Publius Scipio Nasica, was, as the most virtuous man in the state, chosen to accompany the image of the Mater Idaea to Rome. In the Italy of to-day aver naso and esser di buon naso (to have nose, to be of good nose), are the first of series of phrases all turning on that feature in it's symbolic sense and giving rise to proverbs infinite in the variety of their application. The great Napoleon was true to his Italian origin in his preference for "big nose," and the late Lord Beaconsfield, descended from Venetian Jews, never concealed his scorn for the flat nosed Frank" He held, in fact, that to be sinus was the first step toward being simia or ape-a "retrocession in evolution" admitted by some among the facts for Darwin" uch a horror have Italians of any lesion costing the face it's nose or robbing the latter of it's due proportions that rhinoplasty among them has long been one of the surgical fine arts" and the great Bo- lognese anatomist Tagliacozzi (1546-99) has for all time given his name to an ingenious method or replacing the fea- ture when lost. Quite in keeping, therefore, with all precedent as well as with the fitness of things, it is in Italy that we find the "cult of the nose as vital as ever, insomuch that within the last seven years she has had two Con corsi al Nasi Cor nose competitions) in which the owners of the feature re- ceived prizes according as they could present 1t in greatest perfection as re- gards type, size, beauty and olfactory power. The former of these concorsi was held in 1891 at Padua on the initi- ative of the students of that medical school, and the citizens were invited, by universal suffrage and secret voting. to name the possessors of nasi piu sviluppati rispettabili noses of the most pronounced and respectable) of the ancient Venetian town. The prizes, | consisting of pocket handkerchiefs and | snuff boxes were in due course award | ed by plurality of votes.
 | At Milan, and quite recently, a much better ordered and more conclusive | competition of the same kind has just | come off, the whole proceedings being controlled by committee and the "ex- | aminations" conducted in Nasoteca | furnished with drawings and water colors of heads well provided with noses, such as would have gladdened | the artistic sense of William Hogarth. The competitors numbered thirty-six, but not more than twenty-three ap- peared before the examiners. The first prize gold medaD was won by a Vene- | tian Fortunate Michieltti by name, a vender of lucifers, whose nose was fond to be of Formidable proportions, long, well pronounced, aggressive, | trenchant like a knife blade" The second prize fell to one Antonio Pozzi, possessed of nose "domineering, as- suming, with nostrils wide and cavern ous." The award for this was a medal l in enamel, while the third prize, a sil- yer medal of the. first order, was ad- judged to Carlo Ascani, for the refined symmetrical proportions of his nasal feature. The last two prizes, silver medals of the second and third orders respectively, were given for a nose without pretension, ingenious, but solid and well planted" and for one considerable, regular and worthy of respect" The candidates who were unsuccessful perhaps ''ploughed' would be a more suggestive word shared the festivities with which the committee concluded it's labors, and SC the Concorso di Nasi became a thing of the past, till the Buon-temponi
 Cherry makers) of future year or an- other city think fit to revive the harm less mpetition.-Lancet.