to conduct it to various fountains and grottoes. In 1623 they bought a house and a podere, or farm, called La Doccia, which was especially rich in springs. Jacopo died the following year leaving a young son; the lands and the houses in Florence were divided between the cousins, but the villa of Gamberaia remained in their joint possession. “The most illustrious Signore Cosimo Lapi, a noble Florentine” then began to lay out one of the most characteristic seventeenth century gardens in the neighbourhood of Florence, with grottoes inlaid with shells of different kinds and various coloured marbles, statues, vases, fountains and _jeux d’eaux_ of every description. In the archives of Florence are several contracts made by him, between 1624 and 1635, with his neighbours for the purchase of springs and rills of water belonging to them, and the right to make conduits through their lands for the conveyance of the water to Gamberaia. In 1636 he had a lawsuit with a certain Signora Aurelia, a widow, who complained that he had deprived her of necessary water by the deep trenches and reservoirs dug near the confines of her property. The result of this inordinate love of fountains and curious _jeux d’eaux_ was, that when “the most illustrious Florentine Andrea Lapi” died in 1688, his son was obliged to heavily mortgage the estate to pay off his father’s debts. Jacopo’s son Giovan Francesco died in 1717 without heirs male, and the Lapi property was divided between the Capponi and the Cerretani; the latter taking three _podere_, or farms, and some small houses in Florence, the Capponi the villa of Gamberaia and two _podere_. [Illustration: VILLA DI GAMBERAIA.] Remains of conduits, tanks and reservoirs in several properties near Gamberaia still remain to attest the considerable works made by Andrea Lapi for supplying water to his beloved villa. He no doubt planted the noble cypresses that tower like dark green steeples on either side of the long bowling alley that runs for some four hundred feet behind the house, ending to the north in one of those elaborate half grottoes, half fountains, inlaid with shells and decorated with stone figures of impossible animals and queer people in high relief of which Francesco de’Medici set the fashion at Pratolino and at Castello. To the south the long green walk ends in a delightful old stone balustrade with solemn grey stone figures, from whence the view over the fruitful, gently rolling hills crowned with villas or peasant houses is beautiful. The terrace garden looks down on Settignano, a little village that can boast of more famous children than most large towns. Desiderio da Settignano, whose every work shows, as Vasari says, “that grace and simplicity that pleases everywhere and is recognised by everyone,” was the son of a stone-cutter of Settignano. He was so popular that for months after his death sonnets and epigrams were laid on his tomb by admirers.