FIXED OILS. 199 



from Lecce to Bari, with short interruptions at the 

 mountains of Ostuni and one or two other places, 

 your road lies through the same continuous planta- 

 tion of olives. The soil of these districts is very 

 stony and waved into hills of slight elevation ; it is 

 in no part remote from the sea, whose contiguity is 

 certainly favourable to the growth of this valuable 

 tree. Though the long summer heats and the 

 sirocco blowing from Africa are most oppressive at 

 morning, mid-day, and evening, the narrow neck of 

 land is generally refreshed by breezes from the open 

 Mediterranean, or the Adriatic, or the Gulf of 

 Taranto. These immense olive groves bear every 

 year, but it is a well-known fact here, as in the south 

 of Spain, Greece, and all the other oil countries I 

 have visited, that they never produce the same, or 

 any thing like the same quantity of fruit two years 

 following. They have what the people there call 

 a ' si ', e ?io,' or a 4 buoriannata' and a 4 cattiva 

 annataj or a good year and a bad one, and this, in 

 ordinary cases, in regular alternation ; the groves 

 bearing a bad crop this year, bearing a good one the 

 next, and those highly productive this year being 

 proportionably less productive the next year. 



" I could not ascertain the precise time at which 

 they cease to bear, but I have seen abundance of 

 fine fruit taken from trees whose trunks were sadly 

 hollowed and seemed altogether sapless, and which 

 were known to have been planted a century and a 

 half before the time of my observation. I believe, 

 however, that after a hundred years the tree requires 

 manure and more attention, and gradually decreases 

 in its power of production. As the whole wealth of 

 the country consists in olives and oil, and as all 

 hands are employed or interested in this branch of 

 agriculture, it is amusingly curious to observe what 

 frequent allusions are made to it in the popular 



