ON OUR OIL FLASKS. 491 



seeds of the apple, are among the most valuable of all. But the king of 

 the oil-yielding trees is the Olive ; that dusky -looking, shadeless, 

 narrow-leaved, humbug of a tree, which disappoints every one so bitterly 

 at first sight, and for which Europe is indebted to the Greeks of past 

 times, who introduced it from Syria, where the Hebrews had long known 

 its virtues. 



The salad oil of commerce and our summer dinners, is said to be 

 got from Nice and Genoa ; we call it Florence oil, in a grand kind of 

 generalising way ; but excepting the coarse shipments from Gallipoli, 

 good chiefly for machinery, we get but comparatively little Italian oil 

 at all, and very seldom good olive oil unadulterated, even from Aix and 

 Montpellier, whence our chief supplies come. Poppy oil, ground-nut 

 oil, and oil of sesamum, adulterate our table oil ; colza oil adulterates 

 the second running of olive oil, for the manufacturers ; and colza oil 

 itself is adulterated with various cheaper oils, but principally with 

 whale oil. All of which may be discovered by various chemical tests, 

 by which the oil changes colour according to the kinds employed ; but 

 by ways and appearances too long to give here. 



The olive harvest at Aix is an important circumstance in the local 

 life ; on the good or ill-results of which depends the well-being or misery 

 of many hundreds of people. When gathered, the fruit is heaped up in 

 barns and cellars for a few days, to allow just the beginning of fermen- 

 tation to set in ; only the beginning ; for, if suffered to ferment through- 

 out the mass as it lies there, the whole yield would be ruined, and 

 rendered useless save for the coarsest purposes of manufacture. When 

 the exact moment has arrived between the loosening and . fermentation, 

 the obives are put into bulrush bags, called cabas, and crushed very 

 gently under a screw. The pale, greenish-yellow, limpid, sweet, 

 inodorous liquid that runs from this first gentle squeeze, is called Virgin 

 Oil, and is the oil used in the watch trade, being a kind of idealisation 

 of oil, not clogging the finest wheels ; but happy the gourmand who can 

 go shares with the watchmakers, and command fresh virgin oil for his 

 kitchen ! Nothing in the world is such a delicious cooking medium ; 

 and the cordon bleu who can get this, dispenses with all forms of lard 

 or butter, until the pale, greenish yellow turns to a more decided gold, 

 deepening and deepening till it gets the awful hue and flavour known as 

 rancid. When the virgin oil has run out, the half crushed olives are 

 taken out of the bags, to be put in again with boiling water, and again 

 pressed, a little harder under the screw this time. The oil and water 

 run out together ; and, when cold, the oil floats on the top, and is 

 skimmed off with flat ladles : " lever l'huile " the technical term. This 

 is Ordinary Oil, and very good for the table, too, when perfectly fresh, 

 but inclined to become rancid sooner than the virgin. After the skim- 

 ming there is still some oil left in the water, which is led away into a 

 large cistern or reservoir, called l'enfer, where it remains for many days, 

 the oil gradually collecting on the top. Then the water is drawn off 



