This gathering of Italian proverbs will bring to its reader a smile of mutal recognition from the discovery of aphoristic wit and concision pooled with that of a the English. It won't cut much ice ( Italians might say; 'non possono cavare un ragno dal buco') among scholars of paremiology. Here is how it goes. Each Italian proverb is given a literal translation and its English equivalent. These are sometimes identical, perhaps because of their common Biblical or Latin origin. Sometimes they are bizzarrely askance, as our title illustrates. To the Englishman the turnip is too absurd a vegetable to be borrowed for a meaphor on meaness.