484 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 242. 



parent reason, leans out over the lake, and Betula holds him 

 so firmly he cannot fall. I looked and wondered what history 

 was thus told, until I thought I heard the Hamadryads laugh. 

 The sound seemed to come from a distance, but that was, no 

 doubt, a trick of the sly creatures. I have before spoken of 

 the mixed growth of trees here, and the sudden transitions of 

 level within a small area gives place for an equal diversity of 

 flowers. Within four miles around the lake I have noticed 

 seventy varieties of blossoming and fruit-bearing plants. The 

 Asters and Asteroidae are now in great wealth of bloom, and 

 some varieties of special beauty. Coreopsis and many kinds 

 of Solidago make the rocks and road-sides gay. Beside the 

 Peterkill fail the Chelone contrasts its spikes of rose and pur- 

 ple with the white umbels of Eupatorium. Heliopsis and He- 

 lianthus show two variations, and there is a very fine H. 

 tuberosa that I think has strayed from some garden. Tliere 

 are three kinds of Trillium. The Montropa uniflora is un- 

 usually large and beautiful in shady places, and I have found 

 also the Medeola Virginica holding its purple berry in its 

 crimson-tinted involucre instead of the white petals that 

 drooped there when I saw it in April in the mountains of 

 North Carolina. There is a rare and lieautiful low-growing 

 evergreen, Corema Conradii, lobe found in Palmaghatt, and an 

 aromatic Fern new to me, Aspidium fragrans. 



The adaptation of soil and climate here to the growth of 

 flowers is proved not only by the abundance of wild bloom, 

 but by the rich beauty of the gardens at IVIohonk. It has been 

 said that we think we can improve upon nature by shaving a 

 lawn and making impertinent flower-beds. But the skill with 

 which groups of flowers have been massed in harmonizing 

 or contrasting colors around the pretty pavilions and arranged 

 to give effect to the wide sweep of the lawn, delights the eyes 

 that may be a little weary with the monotony of woodland 

 tints. On the higher levels of these mountains the prevailing 

 growth is of Yellow Pine (Pinus mitis), but the Pitch Pine (P. ri- 

 gida) is frequent, and here and there is seen a remnant of an 

 older forest, P. strobus, standing high above the younger gen- 

 eration. Sometimes there is only a naked giant, scathed by 

 lightning or killed by more ignoble fires, but often wearing a 

 crown of sombre glory, and as vigorous as in youth. These 

 trees, whose needles do not retain moisture as do the deciduous 

 trees, increase the dryness of the pure sunlit atmosphere and 

 give it the spicy and resinous fragrance so welcome to the 

 invalid. 17^ o- d 



Minnewaska, N. Y. A/. H. r. 



Oil-making in Italy. 



THE Italian autumn gains a fresh picturesqueness from the 

 active groups about the Olive-trees engaged in the har- 

 vest of this classic fruit, which is still treated with old-world 

 conservatism, after the antique methods of the forefathers. 

 On the ground are spread great sheets, upon which the fruit 

 is heaped as it is gathered, and busy groups come and go 

 around, even the old gray-foliaged twisted trees, whose tor- 

 mented attitudes suggest always that they are at variance with 

 the climate, and are fretting after a warmer region sheltered 

 from Mediterranean winds and the cold breath of the 

 tramontana. 



The Olive-picking is a delicate business, for it is useless to 

 gather the crop before it is ripe enough, and no less disastrous 

 to delay a day too long, so in the heaps of gathered fruit quite 

 a third of the berries are usually green. Like the high-bush 

 Blackberry of our native land, the fruit turns from green 

 through red to a bluish black. It needs gentle liandling, and 

 ought always to be picked by hand. Nor is this a difficult 

 matter, for the trees, if properly cultivated, are well cut back 

 to keep them stocky, while the branches are cleared out from 

 the centre and trimmed across the top, at about fifteen feet 

 from the ground, as smoothly as any hedge-row In England. 

 Once brought to the desired shape and size, they can be so 

 maintained for centuries. The flavor of the fruit is said to 

 improve with the age of the tree. The Olive-trees on the 

 slopes below Tivoti are said to have seen the Emperor 

 Hadrian's sumptuous villa in all its splendor. 



The men use ladders and take charge of the upper branches ; 

 the women, bare-headed or brightly kerchiefed, stand about 

 and pick all the fruit within reach ; children swarm about the 

 ground for the fallen fjerries. They sing a snatch of some 

 Tuscan stornello, which is taken up and carried on from tree 

 to tree and orchard to orchard ; but in the midst of the strain 

 they break off to indulge in a bout of the most unsparing chaff, 

 to dispute some mandate of the overseer, or to pay their re- 

 spects to the padrone or owner of the property as he passes, 

 mounted on his sure-footed little pony. Over all the sun is 

 shining gloriously, in a sky so blue that the gray Olive-leaves 



turn white against it, and so still as to seem almost unearthly 

 to one accustomed to the atmospheric unrest of New England. 



When their large, flat baskets are full the pickers take them 

 to the granaries to be emptied. The sooner the berry can 

 pass from the tree to the mill the better, says the Tuscan 

 farmer, but though the machines are kept working night and 

 day in the height of the season, they do not suffice if the crop 

 be large, and the superfluous berries are carefully spread in 

 thin layers upon dry floors. There is in the olive a thin watery 

 liquid, the same which makes the fresh fruit at once so nau- 

 seating and bitter to the taste, and this, almost as soon as the 

 olive has left the tree, begins to ferment and work its way out 

 of the fruit. It must dry off at once or a mold forms upon 

 the berries, which renders them absolutely worthless. 



As soon as may be, therefore, the olives are picked over, 

 cleared of leaves, washed, if necessary, and taken to the press. 

 Since oil-making demands, above all things, an equable tem- 

 perature during all its processes, the uliviera, as it is called 

 hereabout, is usually installed under ground. Accepting an 

 invitation to enter one of these the other day, we found our- 

 selves, when once our eyes were used to the dim light, in a 

 great branching cavern, hollowed out of the soft rock of the 

 Sienese hill-side. Above was a roughly groined ceiling, on 

 our right the olive-presses proper, before us the machines for 

 crushing the fruit, and beyond a charcoal fire with a huge ket- 

 tle of boiling water suspended above it. In a dark corner a 

 door led to the inner cave, where the oil is clarified. 



There were two crushing machines at work when we en- 

 tered. The base of each consisted of a huge circular block of 

 the yellow marble of Siena, seven feet in diameter, eighteen 

 inches high upon the outer edge, and sloping inward to a 

 depth of about six inches in the centre. Plere was inserted a 

 massive iron pivot, with a short arm attached to a mill-stone 

 of the same beautiful stone as the base, and whicli was driven 

 round and round in the cavity by one of those sturdy little 

 ponies which are the pet and pride of every Tuscan farmer. 

 Unwearyingly these two closely clipped, mouse-colored, will- 

 ing beasts kept at their monotonous task, giving a friendly nip 

 at one another as they met on their circling paths or respond- 

 ing to a caressing word by a hasty rub of the head on the 

 shoulder or arm of the driver, but never lagging for an instant 

 on their unending round. 



Into the hollow of the lower stone is first thrown a heap of 

 Olives, perhaps two or three pecks, a httle boiling water is 

 added and the horse starts off. The water has to be renewed 

 from time to time, and the revolving stone, which has been 

 so set as to detach the pulp as much as may be without break- 

 ing the stone of the fruit, not only bruises the berry but slowly 

 forces the whole mass of pulp about the cavity. After some 

 fifty minutes it will have made a complete revolution and it is 

 then ready for the first pressing, which yields the finest oil. 

 After this the pulp goes back to the mill-stones for a further 

 crushing, is then repressed for second-class oil and the refuse 

 of this is sold to the proprietor of a steam-press, who still suc- 

 ceeds in extracting a profitable amount of machine-oil. 



Steam in new establishments often replaces horse-power at 

 the crushing-mill, but the press is always worked by hand. It 

 takes intelligence — and experience too — to tell when the screw 

 has received a sufficient number of turns and when the pres- 

 sure may again be increased. The crushed olives, called at this 

 stage lansa, are confined under the screw-press by means of 

 gabble, which look, as you see them hanging before the shop- 

 door, like elaborately twisted coils of clothes-line, but which 

 are really bags woven in circular shape, each capable of hold- 

 ing two or three quarts of pulp. A half-dozen of these are 

 slipped over the upright of the iron screw-press, which has 

 long replaced the clumsy wooden lever of early Roman days, 

 and pressure is put on most gently and cautiously for the first 

 quaUty of oil, but with less precaution for the second grade 

 when the stones have been crushed. 



The oil, as it runs from the press to the great earthen jar 

 beneath, appears of a brownish color, owing to the presence 

 of the bitter watery liquid before mentioned. The specific 

 gravity of this and of the oil proper is, however, so different 

 that the work of clarifying begins at once and spontaneously. 

 It is assisted and consummated in the dim inner dungeon, but 

 the secret of this process is never revealed. The great vases 

 of rude pottery are ranged about the walls, each displaying a 

 more advanced stage in the clarification of its contents, till 

 finally a beautiful smooth, translucent, greenish yellow liquid 

 is revealed. But it is not wholly out of politeness, as we know, 

 that the three workmen suspend their labors when we come in, 

 and though their chief makes the round of the little room with 

 the greatest affability and responds with true Italian courtesy 

 to every quesfion, his elaborate answers are distinctly vague. 



