structural:summarization, information:extraction, information:classification
Transhumance

In Italy the transhumance took place mainly starting from the Abruzzi Apennines, moving both towards the Tuscan and Lazio Maremma and above all towards the Tavoliere delle Puglie. The Apennines are to some extent covered with forests, though these were probably more extensive in classical times (Pliny mentions especially pine, oak and beech woods, Hist. Nat. xvi. 177); they have indeed been greatly reduced in comparatively modern times by indiscriminate timber-felling, and though serious attempts at reforestation have been made by the government, much remains to be done.

They also furnish considerable summer pastures, especially in the Abruzzi: Pliny (Hist. Nat. xi. 240) praises the cheese of the Apennines. In the forests Italian wolves were frequent, and still are found, the flocks being protected against them by large sheep-dogs; Marsican brown bears, however, which were known in Roman times, have almost entirely disappeared. Nor are the wild goats called rotae, spoken of by Marcus Terentius Varro (Rerum rusticarum II. i. 5), which may have been either Pyrenean chamois or steinbock, to be found.

Brigandage appears to have been prevalent in Roman times in the more remote parts of the Apennines, as it was until recently. An inscription found near the Furlo pass was set up in AD 246 by an evocatus Augusti (a member of a picked corps) on special police duty with a detachment of twenty men from the Ravenna fleet.

Snow lies on the highest peaks of the Apennines for almost the whole year. The range produces no minerals, but there are a considerable number of good mineral springs, some of which are thermal (such as Bagni di Lucca, Montecatini, Monsummano, Porretta, Telese), while others are cool (such as Nocera, Sangemini, Cinciano), the water of which is both drunk on the spot and sold as table water elsewhere.