The statement made above regarding the prevalence among Italians of a
longer second toe enables us also to qualify the remark made in the
_Westminster Review_ (1884), that “Even at the present day it is a fact
well known to all sculptors that Italy possesses the finest models as
regards the female hands and feet in any part of Europe; and that to the
eye of an Italian the wrists and ankles of most English women would not
serve as a study even for those revivalisms of the antique which are to
be purchased in our streets for a few shillings.” Whatever may be true
of wrists and ankles, the toes must be excepted, at least if a larger
percentage of Italian than of English women have the second toe longer.
Although in matters where so many individual differences exist it is
hazardous to generalise, the following remarks on national peculiarities
in feet, made by a reviewer of Zachariae’s _Diseases of the Human Foot_,
may be cited for what they are worth: “The French foot is meagre,
narrow, and bony; the Spanish foot is small and elegantly curved, thanks
to its Moorish blood.... The Arab foot is proverbial for its high arch;
‘a stream can run under his foot,’ is a description of its form. The
foot of the Scotch is large and thick—that of the Irish flat and
square—the English short and fleshy. The American foot is apt to be
disproportionately small.”