DESCRIPTION OF PLATES. 



Plate I. Frontispiece. Harvesting Cheinlaly olives in a dry-land orchard at 

 Sfax in southern Tunis. Since the quality of the oil is impaired if the 

 fruit becomes bruised, the use of a pole is avoided and the picker uses a 

 ladder to reach the fruit-bearing twigs. Pruning is managed so that every 

 part of the tree can be reached in this way. The native pickers protect 

 their fingers with the tips of rams' horns and can thus strip the fruit off 

 the twigs without injuring their hands. The olives are collected in the 

 large baskets shown in the illustration and are transported by camels to 

 the factory. The plate also shows the clean cultivation of the orchards, 

 the dust mulch maintained on the surface, and the care with which pruning 

 is done. 



Plate II. General view of the older dry-land olive orchards near Sfax, showing 

 the wide planting and clean cultivation practiced and the uniform shape 

 given the trees by careful pruning. The leafless trees in the foreground 

 are figs, these and other fruit trees being occasionally planted in the olive 

 orchards that belong to natives. (From a photograph furnished by the 

 Direction des Antiquites et Beaux Arts at Tunis.) 



Plate III. A fruit-bearing twig of the Chemlaly olive, natural size, from a pho- 

 tograph by M. Minangoin. The fruits of this variety are small but numer- 

 ous and are very rich in oil. They are jet black when ripe. 



Plate IV, Fig. 1. — Recently planted dry-land olive orchards about twenty miles 

 from Sfax. The view shows the careful alignment and wide spacing of the 

 trees, which are 80 feet apart each way and number only 7 to the acre. 

 Most of the trees shown are from ten to twelve years old. The hillside 

 in the immediate foreground and that in the left background are unfit for 

 planting to olives because of the absence of soil, a calcareous rock coming 

 to the surface at these points. Fig. 2. — The interior of an older olive 

 orchard at Sfax, showing the entire absence of weeds, the great distance 

 between the trees, and the well-rounded symmetrical form of the trees 

 due to scientific pruning. These trees are about thirty years old and are 

 in full bearing. 

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