and those of Ravenna are prized for their good quality and aromatic
flavour. When roasted or pounded, they taste like a softer and more
mealy kind of almonds. The task of gathering this harvest is not a
little dangerous. Men have to cut notches in the straight shafts, and
having climbed, often to the height of eighty feet, to lean upon the
branches, and detach the fir-cones with a pole--and this for every
tree. Some lives, they say, are yearly lost in the business.

As may be imagined, the spaces of this great forest form the haunt of
innumerable living creatures. Lizards run about by myriads in the
grass. Doves coo among the branches of the pines, and nightingales
pour their full-throated music all day and night from thickets of
white-thorn and acacia. The air is sweet with aromatic scents: the
resin of the pine and juniper, the mayflowers and acacia-blossoms, the
violets that spring by thousands in the moss, the wild roses and faint
honeysuckles which throw fragrant arms from bough to bough of ash or
maple, join to make one most delicious perfume. And though the air
upon the neighbouring marsh is poisonous, here it is dry, and spreads
a genial health. The sea-wind murmuring through these thickets at
nightfall or misty sunrise, conveys no fever to the peasants stretched
among their flowers. They watch the red rays of sunset flaming through
the columns of the leafy hall, and flaring on its fretted rafters of
entangled boughs; they see the stars come out, and Hesper gleam, an
eye of brightness, among dewy branches; the moon walks silver-footed
on the velvet tree-tops, while they sleep beside the camp-fires; fresh
morning wakes them to the sound of birds and scent of thyme and
twinkling of dewdrops on the grass around. Meanwhile ague, fever, and
death have been stalking all night long about the plain, within a few
yards of their couch, and not one pestilential breath has reached the
charmed precincts of the forest.