OLIVES. 333 



which have existed there for centuries. They yield great 

 crops, and resist the frost. The tree of one of these varie- 

 ties is of a pyramidal form, and produces an oval fruit ; the 

 other has pendent branches, and a large, heart-shaped berry. 

 These olives have been cultivated in the Royal Imperial 

 Garden of Nikita, to preserve and multiply the species, 

 with plants which had been received from Provence, and 

 have endured the rigorous winters of 1825 and 1826, while 

 those of Provence, in the same exposure, perished even to 

 the root. Measures have been recently taken in France 

 for the introduction into that country of " these two pre- 

 cious varieties, which are capable of resisting ten or twelve 

 degrees of cold below the zero of Reaumur' s thermometer " 

 equal to five degrees above the zero of Fahrenheit. 



CULTIVATION AND SOIL. 



The olive is raised from seeds. For this purpose, the 

 fruit is stripped of its pulp, and steeped in an alkaline solu- 

 tion ; they are then buried compactly in soil near the surface, 

 and those which have not been opened by frost during 

 winter, must be cracked in March, and planted. The best 

 foreign varieties may be inoculated on the Olea Americana, 

 or Devil wood, a species of wild olive which grows in 

 the Carolinas and Georgia; also by cuttings, layers, suck- 

 ers from the roots, and by inoculation. But it is propa- 

 gated, in Italy, from the uovoli, which are small knots, 

 swellings, or tumors in the wood, occasioned by the sap 

 not flowing freely to the roots, but swelling through the 

 bark of the stock, thus forming excrescences containing 

 embryo buds. These are easily detached by introducing 

 a sharp penknife close to the trunk of the tree, which sus- 

 tains not the least injury by this operation. Remarks of 

 Signor Manetti, of Monza, near Milan, Lombardy. Lou- 

 don's Mag. 



The olive flourishes best in a rich, moist, deep soil ; but 

 the fruit is of much better quality in a dry, flinty soil, inter- 

 mixed with calcareous rocks : it also suffers less from the 

 frost in such situations. 



The olive was extensively cultivated in France ; but the 

 winters of 1709, 1766, and 1787, were dreadfully destruc- 

 tive ; the dreadful winter of 1789, destroyed all the olives 

 between Aries and Aix, where, in 1787, oil was produced to 

 the amount of 300,000 francs. During the intensely cold 



