=85. Fruits, Olives, Grapes, and Spices.=--Italy, of course, is an excellent fruit country. In the markets are apples, pears, plums, and quinces, besides an abundance of very fine nuts, such as walnuts, filberts, and almonds. Peaches, apricots, cherries, and pomegranates are familiar, although some of these are rather late introductions to the peninsula from the East. Of course, in season there never fail magnificent olives and grapes which have abounded in Italy since time immemorial. A great demand exists, too, for all kinds of salad greens; cresses and fine lettuce, also edible mallows. Poppy-seed mixed with honey is a standard dish for desserts, and such seasonings as anise, fennel, mint, and mustard can be bought in all the innumerable little grocery shops scattered over Rome. In the larger foodshops can be had likewise those Oriental spices in heavy demand by the epicures; and also very costly imported fruits, often preserved with great ingenuity in an age that knows not the use of canning processes, refrigerating plants, or sugar. =86. Meat and Poultry.=--The demand for meat has been steadily increasing with the growth of luxury and economic prosperity. Butchers’ shops abound. Poor people buy goats’ flesh, which, however, is completely disdained by the finical. Many citizens nevertheless never taste beef or mutton except when it is distributed in the form of a sacrifice at some of the great public festivals; and even for the rich beef is not in extraordinary favor. Pork, however, is always popular. The despised Jews never seem to the Romans to show their national folly more clearly than in refusing to eat thereof. Pork in all forms, especially bacon and pork sausages figure in every important banquet; and up in the Apennines in the vast acorn forests, uncounted herds of swine are always fattening to satisfy the incessant demands of the great capital. Poultry is on the whole in greater demand than meat.[46] Squawking coops of common fowl, ducks, and geese are on sale at almost every street corner. There is also good money in raising upon country preserves quantities of partridges, thrushes, and grouse, and even of cranes. In Cicero’s day peacocks made a very fashionable dish, and they are still in request, although losing their old popularity. Hares, rabbits, venison are comparatively cheap, and everybody with a price can buy wild boar at the better purveyors’ shops.