AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 321 



Whoever lias visited the south of France and Europe, where 

 this tree of Minerva yields its mild blessings, has felt his heart 

 rent at the sight of the magnificent olive trees ravaged by a 

 rigorous winter. 



Ever since that disastrous winter of 1829, the most melancholy 

 one in the annals of the olive regions, the very recollection of 

 which is frightful, investigation has taken place. The celebrated 

 and sagacious Oscar Leclerc (too soon snatched from science) 

 proved that the brown olive, of the Department of the Var, 

 resisted cold much better than any other kind. That the Palma 

 or Agua, of the eastern Pyrenees, hardly lost tlie tips of their 

 branches, while other sorts lost branches, and in many the whole 

 trunks died. About that time, Mr. Artwichs, the director of the 

 Imperial garden of Nikita, near Sympherople, in the Crimea, 

 published an account of the olive there, which was unhurt by that 

 severe winter of 1829, when the cold was thirteen degrees 

 Reaumer, (four degrees above zero Fahrenheit.) This information 

 made a noise, and the Palma olive tree proclaimed as the hardiest 

 of all the olives. But there are three sorts proved to be as hardy. 



A very interesting note, published from an honorable member 

 of the Vancluse Agricultural Society, states, that during the hard 

 winter of 1854 and 1855, the Crimean and the Palmo olive trees 

 proved as hardy as was said of them. For while theBlan Vetier 

 the Villedieu, the Grosse Seville, the Grand Seigneur, and even 

 our Brown Olive, lost their top branches, the Crimean and Palmo 

 only, Iiad their leaves turned reddish color, their bodies and 

 branches being smooth and sound. Mr. Francois Poulin, a meri- 

 torious cultivator at Thabor, near the Bedarrides, near Avignon, 

 has long experimented on the Crimean Olive, and proved the ex- 

 cellence of its fruit as well as the hardiness of the tree — the facts 

 are incontestable. 



"We add the testimony of a crowning character^ — that of the 

 excellent brothers Messrs. Audibert, of Tarascon, who said in a 

 letter of July 9th, last: "That the Crimean Olive, established in 

 their magnificent gardens at Tonelle, in 1837, have survived not 

 only severe winters without damage, but severe inundations also. 

 These noble Olive trees are from plants sent to us by Mons. Chal 



[Am- Inst-] 21 



