ant of care. Even as to
flowers, you would find it difficult to make up a bouquet, unless of
ferns, which here abound. The only cultivated flower, except a few
dahlias and sunflowers, are the yellow petals of the lucchini, a kind
of vegetable marrow, which creeps and creeps till its twisted tendrils
and broad leaves occupy, by continual encroachment, the whole field
where they germinate. Besides the _fruit_ of this plant, which we
begin to be supplied with about August, its young leaf and stalk are
boiled like kail for common greens; and its yellow flower, a little
later, makes a _frittura_, which is in request. Fruits are plentiful,
and some of them good; but, for the greater part, of a very inferior
quality. Strawberries, and particularly raspberries, (_lamponi_,) are
found throughout the season; which, commencing with these, and a
scanty supply of currants and gooseberries, (the latter very poor
indeed, and the first quite inferior to our own,) brings us fine figs
of many species and in vast quantities. Apples and pears have their
kinds, and many distinctive names, but are without flavour. The great
supply of the raspberry and small Alpine strawberry is about midsummer
The next-door-hood of all the _Scotch_ families is now fragrant, "on
all lawful days," with the odour of boiling down fruit for jams and
marmalades for winter consumption. As autumn comes on, heaps of
watermelons, piled like cannon-balls under the chestnut-trees, display
their promising purple flesh, and look cooling and desirable, but are
not to be attempted twice under penalty of gastric inconvenience.
Plums and nuts abound, and are followed by a second course of hard,
unripe, and tasteless nectarines and peaches. The season is closing
fast, for the prickly pods of the ripening chestnut now begin to gape,
and the indifferent grapes of the district attain their imperfect
maturity, and are gathered for the wine-press. September is in its
last week, and in less than another month we must all migrate
somewhere for the winter. The baths, on the 15th of October, are quite
empty.

TREES.

A good walnut-tree is as good to a poor man as a milk-cow. "I would
not sell either of those walnut-trees in my garden for thirty scudi
a-piece," said a peasant to us; and, observing that we looked as if we
would not like to tempt him, asked us if we had seen the large
walnut-tree of _Teraglia_, (we had, and had _pic-nicked_ very nearly
under it,) "because," added he,