Book I. 



AGRICULTURE IN ITALY. 



53 



296. The culture of the hills and declivities, Chateauvieux supposes to have been 

 introduced from Canaan at the time of the crusades. But though that culture, and 

 also the irrigation system, have, no doubt, been originally copied from that country and 

 Egypt ; yet some think it more likely to have been imported by the Romans or the priests, 

 than by the chivalric adventurers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 



287. The soil of the kills is in general either schistous or calcareous on a pliable rocky 

 or gravelly bottom. It is cut into horizontal terraces of different widths according to the 

 steepness of the declivity, and each terrace is supported by a wall or sloping bank of turf 

 or stones. Intercepting gutters are formed every sixtj' or seventy feet in the direction of 

 the slope to carry off the waters which do not smk in the rainy season. Sismondi 

 considers the turfed terraces of the hills of Nievole (Jig. 38. ) the most elegant. On the 



38 



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terraces of the most rapid and least favorably exposed slopes, olives are planted ; on the 

 best exposure, vines. Where the terrace is broad, one or more rows of mulberries, and 

 sometimes of fig trees, are planted, and between these, where the soil is not too dry, early 

 crops of grain or legumes are taken. The walls of turf are mown. 



288. The olive being an evergreen and in a state of growth all the year, requires a more 

 equable climate than the vine ; but it will grow on any dry soil, and in an inferior ex- 

 posure, because the fruit never ripens till the hoarfrosts have commenced. The young 

 plants are raised from cuttings or suckers in a nursery, and in the same manner in 

 which it was during the time of the Romans. " An old tree is hewn down, and the 

 * ceppo' or stock (that is, the collar or neck between the root and the trunk, where m all 

 plants the principle of life more eminently resides,) is cut into pieces of nearly the size 

 and shape of a mushroom, and which from that circumstance are called * novali ;' 

 care at the same time is taken that a small portion of bark shall belong to each * novalo ' 

 these, after having been dipped in manure, are put into the earth, soon throw up shoots 

 are transplanted at the end of one year, and in tliree years are fit to form an olive yard." 

 ( Blunt' s Vestiges, &c. 216.) They are planted in rows generally fifteen feet apart, and 

 the same distance between the rows. 



289. The olive is of very slow growth but of great duration. Some plantations exist, which 

 are supposed to be those mentioned by Pliny, and therefore must have existed nearly two 

 thousand years, if not more. In one of these, which we have seen in the vale of 

 Marmora near Terni, the trunks of many trees have rotted at the core, and the cir- 

 cumference split open and formed several distinct stems. Though in ruins, these trees 

 still bear abundant crops. The olive requires little pruning, and is seldom otherwise 

 manured than by sowing lupins under it, and digging them in. The fruit becomes 

 black in November ; is gathered in the course of that and the three following months 

 and ground in a stone trough by a stone turned by a water-wheel. The paste formed by 

 the fruit, and its kernels, is then put in a hair cloth and pressed, and the oil drops in a tub 

 of water somewhat warm, from which it is skimmed and put in glass bottles for sale, or 

 glazed jars for liome consumption. The paste is moistened and pressed a second and 

 third time for oils of inferior quality. The crop of olives is very uncertain ; sometimes 

 one that yields a profit does not occur for six or eight years together, as in the culture 

 of wine and cider : and these departments of culture on the Continent are considered 

 as injurious to the peasant, because in the year of plenty he consumes his superfluous 

 profits without laying any thing aside to meet the years of loss. Hence the remark 

 common in France and Italy, that wine and oil farming is less beneficial than that of 

 corn. 



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