CHAPTER XI 

 THE OLIVE (Olea Europeea) 



TO STATE that the olive has from an unremembered 

 limit of time been the symbol of wisdom, peace, 

 chastity, and victory, is to concentrate volumes of pane- 

 gyrics. And there are truly ages of experience eloquently 

 suggested in the very repression of intensity of colouring 

 possessed by the silent, dignified, mystic-looking gray- 

 green trees which live on indefinitely through Centuries. 

 Typifying the fat of those lands "flowing with milk and 

 honey" which across the seas stretch back into impene- 

 trable dimness, and its fruit literally giving it forth, 

 its leaves resemble rather the muscular tissues of 

 ancient Greek youths whose graceful bodies were not per- 

 mitted to accumulate unnecessary or soft flesh, for these 

 slim, somewhat willow-like leaves are apparently almost 

 devoid of sap, firm to the point of stiffness in texture. 



The olive of European and Asiatic countries, now also 

 thoroughly a product of American-Californian soil, growing, 

 too, even on south walls in parts of southern England, is 

 known to the world through its oil, its pickled and dried 

 fruits. The first is often adulterated with those excellent 

 oils of the cottonseed and peanut (which should be allowed 

 to appear under their own names, however) and poppy and 

 other oils, but the adulteration is the more easily detected 

 that dlivfe oil congeals at a higher temperature than the 

 other oils. It is the fleshy part of the fruit instead of the 

 seed which gives the oil and of this there are several grades, 

 the virgin oil, or best grade, being carefully pressed from 



