tnuts in the Apennines,
and it was the favorite tree of the great painter Salvator Rosa, who
spent much time studying the beautiful play of light and shade on its
foliage. The peasants make a gala-time of gathering and preparing the
nuts. A traveler, having penetrated the extensive forest which covers
the Vallombrosan Apennines for nearly five miles, came unexpectedly upon
those festive scenes, which are not unfrequent among the chestnut-range.
It was a holiday, and a group of peasants dressed in the gay and
picturesque attire of the neighborhood of the Arno were dancing in an
open and level space covered with smooth turf and surrounded with
magnificent chestnuts, while the inmost recesses of the forest resounded
with their mirth and minstrelsy. Some beat down the chestnuts with
sticks and filled baskets with them, which they emptied from time to
time; others, stretched listlessly upon the turf, picked out the
contents of the bristling capsules in which the kernels were entrenched,
for these, when newly gathered, are sweet and nutritious; others again,
and especially young peasant-girls, pelted their companions with
the fruit."

"Like snowballing," said Malcolm; "only the prickers must have stung.
What grand times they had with their chestnuting!"

"These gay, thoughtless people," replied his governess, "almost live in
the open air and enjoy the present moment. It is not easy to tell what
they would do without these bountiful chestnut-harvests, for their
principal article of food is a thick porridge called _polenta_, which
they make from the ground nuts. In France a kind of cake is made from
the same material, and the chestnuts are prepared by drying them in
smoke. Another dish is like mashed potatoes, and large quantities are
exported in the shape of sweetmeats, made by dipping them, after
boiling, into clarified sugar and drying them."

"Miss Harson," asked Clara, "why are horse-chestnuts _called_
'horse-chestnuts '? Do horses like 'em?"

"Not usually," was the reply. "The nuts are sometimes ground and given
to horses, but, as sheep, deer and other cattle eat them in their
natural state, it would seem more reasonable to name them after some of
those animals, if that was the reason. It is likely that because they
look like chestnuts, but are much larger, they were called
'horse-chestnuts,' The tree is not in any respect a chestnut; and when
it was first planted in England, some centuries ago, it was called 'a
rare