CULTIVATED PLANTS, 155 



supplying an oil for burning, for which purpose it was much 

 cultivated in Egypt, Arabia, and India, and is so to this day, 

 although the consumption of the oil is now for medicinal 

 rather than for economical purposes. It had never till of late 

 years been cultivated in Italy, but is among the plants recom- 

 mended for fertihzing the Maremma. Its native country is 

 uncertain. The south of Europe, the coasts of Africa, and East 

 India are generally indicated, but it is certainly not wild in India, 

 and apparently only self-sown in the south of Europe. It may 

 however be really indigenous in Upper Egypt and other districts 

 of Northern Africa. 



Of Fruit-trees the first in importance for the Italians is the 

 Olive (Olea europea). Its great productiveness, longevity, and 

 hardihood against every thing except cold, have extended it over 

 all countries whose climates it will bear, and the origin of its 

 cultivation is lost in the remotest ages of antiquity. From the 

 Holy Scriptures, as well as from the early Greek writers, it 

 appears to have been as general in their days as in ours in Greece, 

 the Holy Land, and North Africa. There has been some discussion 

 as to the period when the Romans first planted it in Italy, 

 Pliny asserting, on the authority of Fenestella, that it was unknown 

 iu Italy, Spain, or Africa, in the time of Tarquinius Priscus (in the 

 year of Rome 133). Yet Pliny also states that the Gauls' inroad 

 into Italy at about the same period was for the acquisition of oil, 

 grapes, wine, figs, &c. However that may be, it is very certain 

 that the Greeks long preceded the Romans iu the cultivation of a 

 number of varieties of olive more productive than the wild plant. 



The olive is perhaps the longest lived amongst European trees. 

 The youthful vigour of individuals known to be three or four 

 hundred years old ; the great tenacity of life observed in the root 

 or stock, throwing up suckers for instance in olive grounds 

 abandoned and converted into sheep walks for upwards of two 

 centuries, and that in a climate where the branches are frozen 

 down two or three times every century ; the numerous traditions 

 of trees supposed to be eight hundred, a thousand, or more years 

 of age ; the extraordinary manner iu which it will resist every 

 ill-treatment inflicted on it by neglect or wantonness, and which 

 gives rise to the common saying in the South, that you cannot 

 kill an olive-tree — all render it more than probable that those 

 venerable olive-trees so beautifully described by Lamartine as now 

 overshadowing the vale of Gethsemane are the identical trees under 

 which our Saviour underwent his blessed agony. 



