68 Foreign Notices : — Italy. 



to some of our readers for our not inserting all the scraps of this sort 

 which they are good enough to copy out and send us from journals and 

 periodicals. — Cond. 



ITALY. 



The Olive may be propagated not only by Novoli (see Vol. VII. p. 663.), 

 but more expeditiously by Buds, Cuttings, and Grafts. — The cuttings are the 

 most valuable, as they soonest produce fruit. They take root so readily, 

 that sometimes a branch or even a trunk of an olive tree that has been broken 

 off, if put into the earth to serve as a prop for a vine or any other tree, will 

 grow, and, in three or four years, bear a tolerable crop of fruit. The best 

 mode of propagation, however, is that adopted by the olive-growers in 

 Tuscany, viz. to raise plants from seed ; a method which invariably pro- 

 duces the largest, strongest, and best young trees. 



In several parts of your Gardener's Magazine, you have expressed an 

 opinion that there is no essential difference between plants raised from 

 seed and those propagated by cuttings or shoots. The result of some 

 observations I have made upon the growth of the olive tree seems to 

 contradict this opinion. 



An olive tree raised from seed throws out a leading or tap root, which 

 penetrates deeply into the ground, while its stem ascends in a vertical 

 direction. An olive tree propagated by cuttings or shoots has no leading 

 root; but its other roots, springing only from the circumference of the sec- 

 tion of the cuttings, eye, or shoot *, spread out near the surface, without 

 ever striking deeply into the soil. This fact is so well known, that on 

 the sides of the hill of Lario, where for ages past the olive tree has been 

 cultivated, the peasants have a common proverb, " That the roots of the 

 olive tree love to hear the sound of the bells." Hence arises a phenome- 

 non which many of your worthy countrymen who have travelled near the 

 Lake of Como may have observed, which is, that the olive trees that are 

 planted upon the sides of those mountains, although originally placed in 

 a vertical position, incline, by degrees, towards the horizon, until they 

 become perpendicular to the side of the mountain ; or, in other words, 

 until they have acquired the same degree of inclination to the horizon as 

 the declivity itself has. That such should be the case appears perfectly 

 natural : since the roots of an olive tree raised from a cutting or shoot, 

 growing very wide apart and always close to the surface of the soil, form 

 a level parallel to its slope. According to this direction of the roots, the 

 stem or trunk of the tree is forced to take one which may not lean upon 

 any portion of the roots more than upon another; it must therefore be 

 perpendicular to all, thence perpendicular to the sides of the hill. This 

 inclination of the olive tree may appear, at first sight, to be extremely useful 

 to the economical disposition of the ground, because, upon ground which in- 

 clines towards the horizon, the more the trees upon it follow the direction 

 of the slope, the greater will be the number of plants which the space can 

 contain ; the number of trees planted vertically being to the number of 

 those whose position is perpendicular to the slope of the hill as the cosine 

 of the angle of inclination is to the radius. 



Nevertheless, this inclination of the olive tree is in truth one of the 

 causes which conduce to its decay, as I have shown in a paper inserted in 

 the Annali Universali di Agricoltura, vol. viii., entitled " On the Decay of 

 the Olive Trees which grow upon the Hill bordering the Lake of Como, 

 the Appearance of the Jfusca olese, &c " This diversity of direction might 



* Not a single root can spring from the central and inferior portion 

 of the section, where there is no liber, from which alone roots can be 

 produced. 



