I have already given you an account of the buildings of Florence, and shall not repeat my criticisms, but rather confine myself to such subjects as were not suited to the time of year when I was there before. The Boboli gardens are very beautiful, rather for their external views than for their interior distribution. They present, I think, the very finest views of the country about Florence. My visits there in July were, as you will suppose, much more pleasant than they could have been in December. The Cascine, the dairy-farm of the grand duke, is also a very pleasant place; a mixture of grove, thicket, and meadow, extending along the banks of the Arno. Fiesole I had seen before, and I repeated my visit more leisurely on this occasion, but the scenery of Tuscany will bear no comparison with the finer parts of the Roman Apennines. The little hills, almost all of the same form, are everywhere covered with olive bushes rather than trees; and though perhaps the country about Florence is more productive, yet considered as scenery, it is inferior in richness, in magnificence, and in variety. With regard to Roman antiquities, the difference, or rather the contrast, is still greater. The remains of Tusculum are more considerable than all that is seen in the neighbourhood of Florence, and those form but a small portion of the objects of that nature about Frescati, which again is poor, compared with Tivoli, Palestrina, or Albano. Even their boasted Etruscan walls have by no means the singularity, or the character of antiquity, which we find in those of Latium. The appearance of the modern city, though certainly very fine, shrinks before the magnificence of Rome; and when you view the whitewash and macigno of the churches, you must not recall to mind the solidity of appearance, and the splendid display of marble, painting, and gilding, which adorns those of the ancient capital of Europe. Nothing holds its importance, except the collections of the Public Gallery, and of the Pitti palace. One of the charms of Rome seems to consist in its possessing a peculiar expression, from the greatest and most important particulars, even to the most trifling details. Everything there is striking and characteristic. The desolate Campagna; the large uninhabited tract within its walls; and even the large pale gray oxen, whose horns might almost match those of the Abyssinian cattle, all contribute to the general effect; and in spite of the surrounding desolation, there is probably no city in the world which presents so great a variety of picturesque scenery in its immediate neighbourhood as Rome; and then every spot belongs to history, and to a wonderful and interesting history with which we are all acquainted. We never feel the value of Rome so strongly as in returning to what we admired before.

I left Florence about three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, and went in a vettura to the Maschere; a poor little inn, about eighteen miles distant; there we slept, but I let my companions proceed without me the next day, meaning to follow them on foot. A wet morning detained me some time, and when at length I set off, the clouds were still hanging low on the mountains. I had dressed myself as lightly as possible, and I felt it rather cold. The walk was however delightful. The scenery everywhere fine, but so equally so, that it did not tempt the pencil; cultivated valleys, sloping hills, and woody mountains, succeeded one after another. The highest point of the pass is called the Fiuta; it has the reputation of being always windy, and when I crossed it, fully maintained its fame. I was much amused by the figures who passed me, closely wrapped up in their cloaks, with their hats tied fast upon their heads, and shrinking from the blast. The northern side is more wild than the south. There is less wood, and more rock, and one or two remarkable crags. They are however ragged crags, and have nothing of the solidity of the Alpine masses. Further on are considerable cliffs, which are kept naked and perpendicular, by the action of water at the bottom. These produce a very different effect on the mind from the precipices of the Alps, whose firmness seems to defy vegetation. I left the road before reaching Pietra Mala, in order to see what is called the Volcano. I was directed to a tract of broken ground of no great extent, but though frequently within a hundred yards of the spot, it was a considerable time before I discovered the flames, putting my hand in the meanwhile to every crack in the soil, to try if I could feel any warmth, and imagining from time to time that I perceived a sulphureous smell; at last however, I succeeded, and it was certainly very curious to see a portion of a field on fire without any apparent cause. The flames issued from a space twenty-two feet long and five feet wide, and there were traces of its action for about four times that space. It is always of more consequence in winter and wet weather, than it is in summer. A plant was growing within a yard of the flames, and corn within about two yards, evidently ripened by their warmth beyond the rest of the field. There was no visible smoke, not the least smell of sulphur, but that of a clear coal fire; no soot is deposited, but a trifling white efflorescence is observable on some of the stones exposed to the flames. The soil about it seemed to be clay mixed with fragments of limestone, and the flames issued from among these fragments, or perhaps partially among rocks of the same nature in situ, but I think they were all detached pieces. The cliffs at a little distance appeared to be also of limestone, but in some little brooks which the road passes, the rock had rather the appearance of a grit. There are likewise some black ragged crags in the neighbourhood.

From this place I passed through Pietra Mala, and went to the boiling spring, which deserved its name still less than the volcano, for there was no water. Its situation was marked by a little spot of bare ground, not three yards in diameter, in the midst of a meadow; and in the middle of this is a small saucer-shaped hollow, about three feet in diameter, in which the earth retained a little moisture. On the application of a candle to the edges of this saucer, they took fire, which showed that a vapour was issuing from the spot, but I could perceive no smell, either before or after the application of flame. My guide had filled some bottles with water at a brook by the way, in order to fill them with the gas at the spring, but the total absence of water disappointed him. Such bottles of air are kept corked up by the people of the inn, who, when they wish to show the effect to strangers, apply a light to the mouth, pouring water at the same time into the bottle. I slept at Scarica l’Asino, and returned to my old quarters at Bologna, but the bed-room I had used before was occupied by a Roman marquis, commissioned, as I understood, from the Holy See, to correct some abuses in the collection of the taxes. Another therefore was assigned to me, within that of the master and mistress, who told me that I should find the doors always open, and might pass through it whenever I pleased, without occasioning any inconvenience. The Roman gentleman, and another, a lawyer from Ancona, were always of the dinner party, and instead of dressing for the meal, as in England, we always undrest, pulling off the coat which had been used for walking about in the city, and generally the waistcoat and neckcloth, and putting on a nankin jacket. Dinner is not a company meal, that is, not one at which persons make an exhibition to their friends of the luxuries they have the means of furnishing to them, but it is by no means a solitary one, and here, besides the persons living in the house, seven in number, there was generally some friend to partake of it.

Of Bologna I have already said all that occurs to me. I left it on the 19th, and went to Modena, where I hardly found so much to interest me as I had anticipated. There is a large ducal palace, and a Gothic cathedral, which is not handsome. Internally, the lower arches seem to be circular, and most of the upper ones pointed: there is a wheel, or marigold window over the entrance, where the rays are formed of little columns, and finish in pointed arches. The choir is elevated, and in the sub-choir below it, we find a forest of little shafts, some of which rest on figures of animals. The front columns at the doorways, both of the west and south entrance, are supported on animals. The principal front consists of a higher gable in the middle, and a sloping roof on each side, the middle division occupying about half the entire extent: and it has a large wheel window, already mentioned, in the upper part.

There is sometimes a simplicity and good proportion in the general design of a façade of an Italian Gothic, which is very pleasing;

and in some instances the disposition of the smaller parts is well managed. I would not recommend that they should be copied altogether, but they afford useful hints for design. Most of these are unfinished, and by this at least we avoid having the building spoilt by bad details. The usual ornament consists of ranges of little arches under the cornices. There is a Gothic cathedral at Reggio, but it has been nearly all modernized, and hardly deserves notice. The Madonna di Consolazione is a very handsome modern church. The form is a Greek cross, with arms, whose depth is equal to the breadth, and a semicircle is added to form the choir. At Parma there is a cathedral built in the eleventh century, and dedicated in 1105; not Gothic, since there are no pointed arches in the original work. The vaulting of the nave is elliptical: a circumstance I do not remember having met with elsewhere in a building of this era. The whole is darkly painted; the vaulting of the nave by Girolamo Mazzola, and the walls by a Lactantius Gambara. The dome at the intersection is ornamented with one of the most celebrated productions of Coreggio, and I am willing to believe that it is very fine; but it is lighted by a set of little windows just below the painting, which render a good view of it impossible; it has also been damaged by the wet. The choir is elevated, and there is a chapel beneath it full of columns, more considerable than that at Modena, and presenting some very picturesque effects. The front here forms one large gable, plentifully adorned with horizontal and inclined ranges of small arches, and minute ornamental arches under the raking cornice, such as I have before described to you at Milan and Verona. It has no leading feature, and I much prefer the division into three parts. The shafts of the doorway rest as usual on animals. This front has no circular window.

Just by the cathedral is the Baptistery, a high octagonal building, erected about 1196, by an architect of the name of Antelmi, or Antélami. On the outside the entrance is formed by a large arch, with three shafts on each side, as in Gothic buildings, and four colonnades, one above another, of small shafts over it, with a wide and nearly plain band between each. The upper, a fifth range, has still smaller shafts, placed closer together, and pointed arches; it is probably an addition to the original design; but as the building was certainly not completed before 1260, it may never have been finished in any other manner. The angles are rounded, or rather, they are truncated, and replaced by two plane surfaces, and finished at the summit by turrets, but the upper part of these is not coeval with the rest of the building. The inside is sixteen-sided.

There is another cupola finely painted by Coreggio, at the church of St. John the Evangelist, and this, though liable to a similar objection in the mode of lighting, yet is more intelligible than that at the cathedral, from the smaller number and greater size of the figures. The church is somewhat in the Brunelleschi style. I next went to the Steccata, said to be a work of Bramante. Some portions of the tribune were painted by Parmegiano, not the whole, for having received a considerable portion of the money agreed upon, and not proceeding as fast as the monks expected, they imprisoned him in order to oblige him to complete his contract, at which he was so enraged that he spoilt great part of what he had executed, and quitted the place. The church is a Greek cross, with very short arms, and a semicircular end to each. It is very darkly painted; the internal proportions are fine, and there is something of a pleasing solemnity in its gloomy appearance. On the outside, the central dome rests on a drum, ornamented with small columns and arches, which has a good effect, but the rest is not worth criticism.

There is a very fine collection of paintings at the academy at Parma; some of them have been at Paris, but I believe all have been restored to Parma to which it had any claim. Among these is the exquisite picture of St. Jerome, by Coreggio, which you must have seen at the Louvre, and several other admirable paintings by that artist, but nothing which can be compared to this. There are also many fine productions of the Lombard and Bolognese schools. Here is also an interesting museum of antiques, consisting principally of objects found at Velleia, a city destroyed by the fall of a mountain, about the end of the fourth century; and a public library, containing eighty thousand volumes; the cases are about fifteen feet high, and the moveable steps as much as nine, but the librarian assured me that this disposition was not found inconvenient. All these are contained in a great palace, intended by the dukes of Parma for their residence, but certainly not on a scale corresponding with the extent of their dominions. Only about half of the design has been erected, and great part of that is still unfinished, yet besides the establishments already mentioned, it contains a great theatre, 300 feet long, which in fact is neither beautiful nor convenient, but very remarkable on account of the distinctness with which one hears even a low voice on the stage through every part; it is all of wood, and all the planks are disposed vertically, which is not consistent with the plan usually adopted for the distant propagation of sound. There is also another smaller theatre, and I know not what besides, all upon the first floor. I have resolved not to tire you with accounts of paintings, otherwise I should be tempted to say a little more of those which form the great boast of this city. The language here is a mixture of Milanese, Bolognese, and Venetian, “Se vol vder nteck chais,” said a boy to me, who wanted to obtain a little money by shewing me the Baptistery, to which I certainly did not want his guidance. You are to pronounce the letters as if you were reading English. The police officer who took my passport at the gate was startled at its length, “tutt quest passport,” and to save himself the labour of reading it, requested to know if I were “posdent o ngoziant,” and when I had satisfied him on that point, begged for something to buy “npocdpan.”

From Parma I proceeded to Mantua. In this part of Italy the vines are frequently supported on elms, but the elms are small, and universally pollards. The Indian corn was just showing its silky filaments, but all the sorts of grain you have in England were cleared away. We crossed the Po by a ferry; the water was muddy, as I believe it always is; the banks are a sandy loam, and the water is continually eating away the earth on one side, and depositing its silt on the other. These changes of its bed are said to be productive of frequent litigations. I cannot say much for the pleasantness of the road, which lay entirely on a dead flat, but in a fertile and highly cultivated country. Mantua is situated very low, and in the midst of the waters, and the fortifications have none of that show, which one is apt to expect from their military reputation: but I believe this lowness, and want of appearance, is one source of its strength. I observed on the road, parties of women winding silk out of a large cauldron, where the water was kept nearly boiling by a fire underneath it.

As in the time of its greatest prosperity, Giulio Romano was made the arbiter of everything that was erected at Mantua, I expected to have found some degree of uniformity of style in its buildings, but on the contrary it is, I think, the most whimsical and capricious in its architecture of any city in Italy. The cathedral was a Gothic building of brick, and one or two fragments of the old edifice remain in a very picturesque style. The side chapels form a range of extremely acute gables, or perhaps I should say pediments, for the horizontal cornice is continued across them, while there is merely a small moulding on the rake, which cannot be called a cornice, and it is difficult to give them an appropriate name; below are two lancet windows, and turrets between the chapels, rising on a sort of buttress. I do not pretend to decide upon the date. It was altered, or perhaps rather rebuilt by Giulio Romano; and the inside is from his designs, but with some more modern alterations. As it stands now it might be esteemed a bad imitation of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, but with double ranges of side-aisles. The columns stand very wide apart. Giulio Romano was fond of giving an appearance of squareness in his principal divisions, as I have already observed to you in the account of some of his works. The clerestory is an upper order of pilasters, which as usual in churches of this design, is too large in proportion to the lower. There is not a window over every intercolumn, but they alternate with niches. The first aisle on each side is arched; the second has a flat covering. The church forms a cross with a small cupola at the intersection; it is too high in proportion to its width.

The Palace of the Tè is said, but erroneously, to have derived its name from its ground plan presenting a form similar to that of the letter. This is also of the architecture of Giulio Romano. The spaces between the columns or pilasters are nearly as wide as they are high. In the internal architecture there is little to admire, but there is a great deal of fine painting by this artist and his pupils.

There are two churches in Mantua, built from the design of L. B. Alberti. The first I shall mention is that of St. Sebastian. The front has, on the ground level, an arcade of five arches, with pilasters between, very small in proportion to the great square mass above. The entablature, which finishes the building under the pediment, is cut by a little arch, which contains a window, and underneath this has been a fresco of Andrea Mantegna. Internally, the room has the shape of a Greek cross, with slight recesses, one of which is filled up with a gallery supported on columns and arches, very well introduced; but the details are not good, and the whole is whitewashed. The other, and much the finer church, is that of Sant Andrea, which may fairly be considered as one of the handsomest in Italy. The doorway is ornamented with an imitation of the pilaster foliage in the Villa Medici at Rome, which I have before mentioned to you, and it is well drawn, and well executed, except that a vase is substituted at the bottom for the beautiful group of acanthus leaves which exists in the original. Internally, the nave is supported on pilasters, which are alternately about three and a half, and seven diameters apart, the largest spaces being arched chapels. The pilasters are all panelled, and filled with painted ornaments, which have rather too much opposition of colour. The vault is unbroken, and has regular square panels. The principal light is from the drum of the cupola, but there are also semicircular windows at the extremities of the side chapels, and small circular windows over the narrower interpilasters, which would be better omitted. This edifice was begun in 1470, but the whole was not completed till so late as 1782, so that considerable alteration may have been made in the original design. It is about 340 feet long, and the nave is about 60 feet wide and 90 high.

There is a bridge over the branch of the Mincio which traverses the city, on which Giulio Romano erected an open arcade for the fish-market. Over the arches is a low story, divided into nearly square compartments, and a window in each. The design is good, as is that of the public slaughter-house, also built over the river, and which is still plainer, as there is no cornice over the arches, and no mouldings or panelling above, except the cornice which crowns the building.

Mantua, you know, is in a great measure surrounded by a lake, formed by damming up the waters of the Mincio. This lake is traversed by two long bridges, or perhaps I should rather call them dams, which are in some parts perforated by arches, to let out the superfluous water. At the extremity of the upper bridge there is a gateway attributed to Giulio Romano, which is really a handsome composition; but it would be difficult to describe it. The dwelling of this painter-architect is also exhibited. He has been very whimsical in the composition, and one can see no object for the mode in which he has managed it.

Mantua upon the whole is neither a fine city, nor in a pleasant situation. The best part is the Piazza Virgiliana, which is a large square, surrounded with trees, and open on one side to the lake, and to the distant Alps.

From Mantua I descended in a passage-boat to Ferrara, but there is no great beauty of river scenery either on the Mincio or the Po. We did not reach Ponte di Lago Scuro till past nine, and an insolent underling at the customhouse, told us we might carry our things back to the boat, for that nothing would be passed that night, nor should we ourselves be permitted to proceed. After waiting a little while however, the superior made his appearance, and all our matters were arranged without farther difficulty, but the stories we heard of a gang of robbers going about the country in small parties, induced us to put up with very bad accommodations at Ponte di Lago Scuro, rather than to go at once to Ferrara. There were several circumstances which persuaded me that these stories were excessively exaggerated, but it was most prudent to stay. The bridges over the Po, from one of which this place derives part of its name, have less claim to the appellation than any I ever saw. A string of eight or ten boats is made by fastening them together with long ropes; the upper one is moored in the middle of the river, and the ferry-boat is attached to the lowest, and by help of a large rudder, on which the stream acts diagonally, swings across from one side of the water to the other. On the next morning we reached Ferrara at half-past eight, and I spent the day in looking at the architecture and paintings of the city. I have already mentioned the Duomo in a former letter, but as I surveyed it at this time more at my leisure, I shall give you some further account of it. It was consecrated in 1135, and of this ancient part, the front, and great part of the sides still remain. Internally, however, all the earlier work is destroyed or covered up. The semicircular end of the choir was erected in 1499. For the ancient sculpture we have the name of a certain Nicolaus:

but we have not the name of the architect who designed the façade; for this Gliemo was Guglielmo degli Adelardi, a nobleman, at whose expense the church was built. The architect of the circular part is said to have been a Ferrarese, of the name of Biagio Rosette, one of the early restorers of Italian architecture, who died in 1516, but I know not at what age, and I cannot find his name in Milizia. The remainder of the part beyond the transept was modernized in 1637, and the rest of the church between 1712 and 1735. The front is divided into three equal parts, each surmounted with a gable, and ornamented with horizontal ranges of pointed arches, and smaller arches also pointed, are disposed under the rake of the gable. In each gable there is a small wheel-window. The porch has a semicircular arch resting on columns. Whatever may be said for ranges of arches supported on columns, these single arches, with merely one slender column on each side, must be reprobated in every style of architecture. A small turret resting on a square base carried down to the ground, and crowned with a pinnacle, separates the gables, and a similar ornament seems to have been adopted at the extreme angles of the front, but the upper part of them has been destroyed. The flanks are ornamented, not with pointed, but with semicircular arches. There is, however, an ornament above the upper range, which exhibits the reversed arch, but it may have been an addition. This want of correspondence between the side and front, makes one suspect that they are not precisely of the same date, and the flank is probably the oldest, as the architecture corresponds with that of other edifices in Italy of the eleventh century, and the early part of the twelfth; the front I should think posterior to the dedication. The inside contains some good paintings, but nothing fine in architecture, and there are many fine pictures in the churches and palaces of the city, but nothing of first-rate excellence. The best are principally by Guercino and Garofalo. The general style of architecture is much superior to what I have lately seen north of the Po. The city does not boast any remarkable building, any more than any of the very fine paintings, but the palaces have an air of solidity and magnificence. The straight streets in the new parts of the town want houses, and there are too many traces of decay; yet, when an enumeration was made in 1784, Ferrara and its suburbs contained 31,253 inhabitants, which is far more than you would suppose from present appearances. As it seems to possess no advantages of situation either for commerce or habitation, we may wonder that it should contain so many, but in the time of its glory, in the thirteenth century, under the family of Este, at first as chief magistrates, and afterwards as hereditary governors, either acting independently, or holding of the pope, Ferrara is computed to have contained more than twice the number. Its greatest celebrity arises from its association with the names of Ariosto and Tasso, who paid in praise, the ambiguous patronage of the house of Este. The habitation of Ariosto is still shewn; it was built by himself. It is a pity he had not a better architect. His chair and inkstand, and a portion of the original manuscript of the Orlando are preserved in it.

There is a church at Ferrara famous for its echoes. The nave seems to have been intended to present a series of cupolas, as the side aisles actually do on a smaller scale, but in its present state, at the point where the square is reduced to a circle, a flat ceiling is introduced instead of a cupola. Standing under any one of these, the slightest foot-step is repeated a great many times, but so rapidly, that it is difficult to count the reverberations. I reckoned sixteen, but the effect is rather a continued clatter than a succession of distinct sounds. From Ferrara I returned to my old quarters at Bologna, and spent a few days in endeavouring to understand the construction of modern Greek, with the help of Mezzofanti; after which I set off on my return by way of Ancona and Loreto to Rome.

I left Bologna at midnight on the 2d of August. My companions were an Italian gentleman and his lady, inhabitants of Urbino, who were returning home after a visit to Florence. They complained that they could not understand a word of Bolognese. We reached Imola at about six in the morning, where we stayed about an hour, and I visited the cathedral, but I have nothing worth telling you about it. Our next stopping place was Faenza, which has given the French name to earthenware. The piazza here is surrounded by arches on columns, and over this a wide colonnade supporting a slight roof. The upper columns are on detached pedestals, with balustrades between them; a continued pedestal would have been better, but an arrangement of this sort round a large opening has an architectural effect. The church has its nave divided into squares, and in each large arch are two smaller ones opening into the side aisles. This change of design never succeeds. I left my companions at Faenza, whence a sediola, a sort of one-horse chair, conveyed me to Ravenna.

My driver amused me with a story about Raphael. This artist, according to the tale, stayed five or six days somewhere at an inn, and paid for nothing, as indeed he had no money, and the account becoming rather high, the landlord was alarmed, and urged payment. Raphael demanded the account, and when he had received it, painted the requisite number of sequins upon the table, and something over. He then called for the landlord, and meeting him at the door, pointed to the table, saying, “There is your account,” and passed on. The landlord, seeing, as he thought, the gold, and not doubting that he was generously paid, attended his guest to the gate of the inn, and having seen him depart, returned to take his money, but was very much surprised on attempting to sweep it off into his hand, to find that nothing moved; he repeated the action with no better success. He then called in the waiters and his neighbours; but though every body saw the money there, nobody could lay hold of it. At last, an Englishman passed that way, (in relating these stories to an Englishman, they never fail to introduce one of his countrymen) who told them it was a most valuable painting, worth a thousand crowns. The landlord, however, was contented to sell his table for a hundred sequins, (about 50l.). What the uneducated mind admires in a painting is deception, and that alone, and if Raphael was a great painter, he must, according to their notions, have possessed that power in a high degree. You hear his name, and those of the other great painters of Italy, frequently in the mouths of the common people, but this is the way in which they think of them.

You want me to say something of manufacturing and agricultural industry, but you apply to a very incompetent person, as my attention is too strongly directed to other inquiries, to allow me time to enter into the details of these subjects. Yet, of the first, if I say little, I might plead that there is little to be said. I saw, indeed, at Milan, some very beautiful cloth. There was a public exhibition for premiums; but these hot-bed productions, fostered by the government more for shew than utility, are no criterion by which to judge of the productions of the country. The political revolutions to which Italy has lately been subject must have had an adverse influence, and an arbitrary and changing system of taxation must prevent the employment of any considerable capital. As to the agriculture, it seems very generally extended, though not perhaps very perfect. The proprietor is in a sort of partnership with the cultivator, finding the necessary capital, while the latter finds labour, and there is commonly an agent employed by the large proprietors, to see that the countryman performs his part of the bargain, without secreting any of the profits. With the exception of the Campagna, even the Roman states are generally in cultivation, and in that there are considerable difficulties in the way, though the accounts of mal aria may be exaggerated. The mountains are often better cultivated than the plains, where the slope is not too steep to admit of it. In our climate, when we arrive at the height of twelve or fifteen hundred feet, the cold and wet will hardly permit any profit to the agriculturist; but in Italy, corn will ripen well in elevations of between three and four thousand, and deciduous trees flourish. This gives to Italian mountain scenery a character extremely different from that of our own country. There are no dreary moors, no wide bogs, and even no heathy commons. The sandy shores, steep, crumbling banks of clay or sand, and soil of naked rock, are necessarily abandoned, but elsewhere the land is employed, and seems in general fertile. This year has been remarkably dry, and they say that the crops of Indian corn are suffering on that account. The wheat harvest has been good, and the grapes are very abundant; the market at Bologna exhibited a profusion of fruit. Peaches were in immense abundance; more than you will see of apples and pears in any London market. The best were sold to me as a stranger, at three bajocs the pound, containing about four full sized peaches. Figs two bajocs. Of melons there is also a prodigious number. A good sized one costs four or five bajocs; the water-melons cost more, because they are larger. There are plenty of pears, but not very good; few apples. Grapes are just coming in; they are hardly in fact yet ripe, but the Italians give a decided preference to unripe fruit.