At the present day there are numerous varieties of the chesnut. Those of Tarentum are a light food, and by no means difficult of digestion; they are of a flat shape. There is a rounder variety, known as the “balanitis;”[1977] it is very easily peeled, and springs clean out of the shell, so to say, of its own accord. The Salarian[1978] chesnut has a smooth outer shell, while that of Tarentum is not so easily handled.[1979] The Corellian is more highly esteemed, as is the Etereian, which is an offshoot from it produced by a method upon which we shall have to enlarge when we come to speak of grafting.[1980] This last has a red skin,[1981] which causes it to be preferred to the three-cornered chesnut and our black common sorts, which are known as “coctivæ.”[1982] Tarentum and Neapolis in Campania are the most esteemed localities for the chesnut: other kinds, again, are grown to feed pigs upon,[1983] the skin of which is rough and folded inwards, so as to penetrate to the heart of the kernel. CHAP. 26. (24.)—THE CAROB. The carob,[1984] a fruit of remarkable sweetness, does not appear to be so very dissimilar to the chesnut, except that the skin[1985] is eaten as well as the inside. It is just the length of a finger, and about the thickness of the thumb, being sometimes of a curved shape, like a sickle. The acorn cannot be reckoned in the number of the fruits; we shall, therefore, speak of it along with the trees of that class.[1986] CHAP. 27.—THE FLESHY FRUITS. THE MULBERRY. The other fruits belong to the fleshy kind, and differ both in the shape and the flesh. The flesh of the various berries,[1987] of the mulberry, and of the arbute, are quite different from one another—and then what a difference, too, between the grape, which is only skin and juice,[1988] the myxa plum, and the flesh of some berries,[1989] such as the olive, for instance! In the flesh of the mulberry there is a juice of a vinous flavour, and the fruit assumes three different colours, being at first white, then red, and ripe when black. The mulberry blossoms one of the very last,[1990] and yet is among the first to ripen: the juice of the fruit, when ripe, will stain the hands, but that of the unripe fruit will remove the marks. It is in this tree that human ingenuity has effected the least improvement[1991] of all; there are no varieties here, no modifications effected by grafting, nor, in fact, any other improvement except that the size of the fruit, by careful management, has been increased. At Rome, there is a distinction made between the mulberries of Ostia and those of Tusculum. A variety grows also on brambles, but the flesh of the fruit is of a very different nature.[1992] CHAP. 28.—THE FRUIT OF THE ARBUTUS.