696 THE OLIVE. 



tested. The apathy of Southern planters generally, respecting 

 all products but cotton and rice, is the only reason for the tardy 

 manner in which this and other valuable trees are introduced 

 into cultivation there. 



The uses and value of the olive-oil are still comparatively 

 unknown in this country. In the South of Europe it is more 

 valuable than bread, as, to say nothing of its wholesomeness, it 

 enters into every kind of cookery, and renders so large a quan- 

 tity of vegetable food fit for use. A few olive trees will serve 

 for the support of an entire family, who would starve on what 

 could otherwise be raised on the same surface of soil ; and dry 

 crevices of rocks, and almost otherwise barren soils in the 

 deserts, when planted with this tree, become flourishing and 

 valuable places of habitation. 



The olive is a native of the temperate sea-coast ridges of Asia 

 and Africa; but it has, time out of mind, been cultivated in the 

 South of Europe. It is a low evergreen tree, scarcely twenty 

 feet high, its head spreading, and clothed with stiff, narrow, 

 bluish green leaves. Its dark green or black fruit is ovaJ, the 

 hard fleshy pulp enclosing a stone. In a pickled state the fruit 

 is highly esteemed. The pickles are made by steeping the 

 unripe olives in ley water, after which they are washed and 

 bottled in salt and water, to which is often added fennel, or 

 some kind of spice. The oil is made by crushing the fruit to a 

 paste, pressing it through a coarse hempen bag, into hot water, 

 from the surface of which the oil is skimmed off. The best oil 

 is made from the pulp alone : when the stone also is crushed, it 

 is inferiour. 



PROPAGATION AND CULTURE. A very common mode of pro- 

 pagating the olive in Italy, is by means of the uovoli (littlo 

 eggs). These are knots or tumours, which form in considera- 

 ble numbers on the bark of the trunk, and are easily detached 

 by girdling them with a pen-knife, the mother plant suffering 

 no injury. They are planted in the soil like bulbs, an inch or 

 so deep, when they take root and form new trees. It is also 

 propagated by cuttings and seeds. The seedlings form the 

 strongest and thriftiest trees ; they are frequently some months 

 in vegetating, and should therefore be buried an inch deep in 

 the soil as soon as ripe. 



The wild American olive ( Olea Americana, L.) or Devil-wood, 

 a tree that grows more or less abundantly as far north as Vir- 

 ginia, will undoubtedly prove a good stock, on which to engraft 

 the European olive. It is of a hardier habit, and though worth- 

 less itself, may become valuable in this way. 



The olive-tree commences bearing five or six years after being 

 planted. Its ordinary crop is fifteen or twenty pounds of oil 

 per annum, and the regularity of its crop, as well as the great 

 age to which it lives, renders an olive plantation one of the most 



