"There are magnificent forests of Spanish chestnuts 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."