698 FRUIT CULTURE IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES. 



rancid, besides the risk of injury from premature frost or snow and 

 insects, so that the surer practice is to gather while some part of the 

 fruit is still green. 



For table use, on the contrary, it should be plucked not quite ripe, 

 and, the finest and largest being selected, to neutralize the contained 

 acid which renders them acrid to the taste, they are placed as soon as 

 gathered in a vessel of glass or earthenware, filled with lime-water in 

 which the olives float, and the orifice closed with osier. After standing 

 thus for twenty-four hours the lime-water is drawn off from below and 

 replaced by water, fresh and pure ; thenceforward it should be re- 

 newed every twelve hours, alternating pure and lime water till the 

 liquid comes from the jar flat and tasteless. In this condition the 

 olives may be long kept good if immersed in a solution of seasalt fla- 

 vored with any aromatic. 



For drying, the olives are gathered later and riper, and dried in the 

 sun or oven like any other fruit. 



PROCESS OF EXTRACTING THE OIL. 



The processes for extracting the oil all date from time immemorial, 

 and are of the most primitive description. After fermentation the fruit 

 yields its oil much more readily but of inferior quality and already with 

 a commencement of rancidity. Nevertheless the difficulty of extract- 

 ing it completely with their imperfect appliances, leads many to provoke 

 fermentation by keeping the olives closely covered with matting or 

 woolen cloths. They are then placed in a hopper, from which they drop 

 gradually into the hollow, inverted, and truncated cone of a great stone 

 mortar, in the bottom of which turns a sort of millstone, grinding fruit 

 and stones to a coarse paste. The pulpy mass is now mixed abundantly 

 with warm water, placed in sacks of hempen cord, and ready for the 

 press. This last is of the simplest mechanism ; a heavy wooden beam 

 from 8 to 12 yards in length, fixed at one end and acted on by a screw 

 at the other, forms a lever of the second class. The sacks are placed 

 on the platform in piles of two and three or three and four on each other, 

 in a double heap, to adjust them to the inclination of the press-beam, 

 and as the pressure increases are crowded back and still bathed with 

 warm water until the pulp begins to leave the sack with the oif . This is 

 the first draught and the first quality of oil. The refuse mass is then 

 emptied again into the mortar, with a liberal addition of warm water, 

 ground over, and again put to press, yielding still a fair quality of indif- 

 ferent oil. The whole operation is repeated a third time, and after pass- 

 ing through a coarse sieve, even a fourth time, but these last dregs are 

 only fit for burning or mechanical purposes. This is all that can be ob- 

 tained by the press power at present in use here, and yet so rich is the 

 fruit that after this insistent extraction, the oil still held in the refuse 

 gives it unequaled value as a fertilizer or as food for animals. 



The oil from these repeated pressions, largely mixed with pulpy and 



