THE OLIVE. 



359 



yellow ; but when they expand their four petals, 

 the insides of them are white, and only the centre 

 of the flower yellow. The matured wood of the 

 olive is hard and compact, though rather brittle, 

 and has the pith nearly obliterated, as is the case 

 with box. Its colour is reddish, and it takes a 

 fine gloss ; on which account the ancients carved 

 it into statues of the gods ; the moderns make it 

 into snuff-boxes and other trinkets. 



Besides its use for the production of oil, the 

 unripe olive is used as a pickle. For this piir- 

 pose they are steeped in an alkaline solution, to 

 extract a part of their bitter; they are next 

 washed in pure water, and afterwards pi-eserved 

 in salt and water, to which fennel, or some aro- 

 matic, is sometimes added. 



The wild olive is found indigenous in Syria, 

 Greece, and Africa, on the lower slopes of the 

 Atlas. The cultivated one grows spontaneously 

 in many parts of Syria, and is easily reared in 

 all parts of the shores of the Levant that are not 

 apt to be visited by frosty winds. Where olives 

 abound they give much beauty to the landscape. 

 " The beautiful plain of Athens, as seen toward 

 the north-west from Mount Hymettus, appears 

 entirely covered with olive trees." Tuscany, 

 the south of France, and the plains of Spain, are 

 the places of Europe in which the olive was 

 first cultivated. The Tuscans were the first who 

 exported olive oil largely, and thus it has ob- 

 tained tlie name of Florence oil ; but the purest 

 is said to be obtained from about Aix in France. 



The particular departments of France in which 

 the olive is most successfully cultivated are those 

 of the Mouths of the Rhone, of the Var, of the 

 Gard, and some others ; but it does not ripen its 

 fruit to the north-west of a line drawn from the 

 Pyrenees, near Narbonne, to the foot of the little 

 St Bernard in the Alps; or in that part of 

 France which may be considered as forming a 

 portion of the basin of the MediteiTanean, and 

 Avhich is enclosed between that sea and the moun- 

 tains of Cevennes and the Alps. 

 » The proper time for gathering olives for the 

 press is the eve of maturity. If delayed too 

 long, the next crop is prevented, and the tree is 

 productive only in the alternate yeai-s. At Aix, 

 where the olive harvest takes place early in No- 

 vember, it is annual : in Languedoc, Spain, and 

 Italy, where it is delayed till December or Janu- 

 ary, it is in alternate years. The quality of the 

 oil, also, depends upon the gathering of the fruit 

 in the first stage of its maturity. It should be 

 carefully plucked by the hand ; and the whole 

 harvest completed, if possible, in a day. To 

 concoct the mucilage, and allow the water to 

 evaporate, it is spread out, during two or three 

 days, in beds three inches deep. The oil mill is 

 simple. The fruit is reduced to a pulp, put into 

 sacks of coarse linen, or feather-grass, and sub- 

 jected to pressure. The oil first expressed is the 



purest. The oil of the kernel is said to injure 

 that of the fruit, and cause it to become sooner 

 rancid. The growth of olives and the manufac- 

 ture of the oil offer a considerable employment to 

 many of the inhabitants of France and Italy. 

 The importation of olive oil into Great Britain 

 amounted, in 1827, to about four thousand five 

 hundred tons, paying a duty of eight guineas 

 per ton. 



The olive grows in England, though, in the 

 severity of our winters, it changes its character. 

 In the south it is an evergreen ; but in England 

 it loses its leaves. Indeed, it needs protection 

 even in the mildest winters ; and it is only in 

 the very warmest summers that it will produce 

 fruit a little, which does not ripen, and is of veiy 

 slight flavour. It appears to have been culti- 

 vated in the botanic garden of Oxford in 1648. 

 In Devonshire some trees have stood the open 

 air for many years. Some trees, planted against 

 a warm wall at Camden house, near Kensington, 

 succeeded so as, in 1719, to produce fruit fit for 

 pickling. 



In ancient times, especially, the olive was a 

 tree held in the greatest veneration, for then the 

 oil was employed in pouring out libations to the 

 gods ; while the branches formed the wreaths of 

 the victors at the Olympic Games. It was also 

 used in lubricating the human body. Some of 

 the traditions say that it was brought out of 

 Egypt to Athens by Cecrops ; while others affirm 

 that Hercules introduced it to Greece on his re- 

 turn from his expeditions; that he planted it 

 upon Mount Olympus, and set the first example 

 of its use in the games. The Greeks had a pretty 

 and instructive fable in their mythology on the 

 origin of the olive. They said that Neptune, 

 having a dispute with Minerva as to the name 

 of the city of Athens, it was decided by the gods 

 that the deity who gave the best present to man- 

 kind should have the privilege in dispute. Nep- 

 tune struck the shore, out of which sprung a 

 horse ; but Minerva produced an olive tree. The 

 goddess had the triumph ; for it was adjudged 

 that peace, of which the olive is the symbol, was 

 infinitely better than war, to which the horse 

 was considered as belonging, and typifying. 

 Even in the sacred history, the olive is invested 

 with more honour than any other tree. The 

 patriarch Noah had sent out a dove from the ark, 

 but she returned without any token of hope. 

 Then " he stayed yet other seven days, and again 

 he sent forth the dove out of the ark ; and the 

 dove came to him in the evening, and, lo, in her 

 mouth was an olive branch plucked off: so Noah 

 knew that the waters were abated from the 

 eaith." 



The veneration for the olive, and also the 

 great duration of the tree, appears from the his- 

 torj"- of one in the Acropolis at Athens. Dr 

 Clarke has this passage in his Travels, in speak- 



