SAMUEL RAE & CO. LEGHORN, TUSCANY. 



7 



hardy and acclimatized to the locaHty 

 where -they are raised, but of slow- 

 growth. Hesiod says that he who sows 

 the ohve will not eat of the fruit of it. 

 Plants obtained in this way invariably 

 revert to the wild variety, as indicated 

 by their very narrow and pointed leaves, 

 and therefore require grafting. 



Though the wood of the olive is very 

 hard, yet cuttings properly planted will 

 throw out suckers very readily ; a cir- 

 cumstance to which Virgil calls attention 

 in the lines : 



''Qiiin et caudicibus sectis, mirabile dictu 

 Truditur e sicco radix oleagina ligno." * 



The cuttings should be two or three 

 feet long, a couple of inches in thickness, 

 and straight. 



Neither this method of propagation, 

 nor that by shoots taken from the 

 parent tree, are much resorted to, ovoli 

 being generally preferred by olive-grow- 

 ers as an easier, simpler, and generally 

 more satisfactory method. The term 

 ovolo, from ovo, an egg, is given to 

 those egg-shaped excrescences which 

 appear on the trunk of the olive-tree 

 near its base and on its large exposed 

 roots. The ovoli are carefully excised 

 from the tree and bedded ; when shoots 

 appear, the strongest is selected, the 

 others being removed. At from four 

 to seven years old the young trees may 

 be planted out." 



Vitality. 



Under favorable circumstances the 

 olive attains to a great longevity and 

 may continue to bear fruit for centuries. 

 Pliny mentions that in his time there 

 were to be seen at Liternum, a town in 



* And moreover, wonderful to say, if the stems 

 are cut into lengths an olive-root is thrust forth 

 from the dry wood. — Georgic, L. II. 30. 



the Roman Campania, olive-trees which 

 Scipio Africanus had planted 250 years 

 before. In the island of Pianosa, off 

 the coast of Tuscany, are to be seen 

 some thousands of trees, of the semi- 

 wild type, still thriving, which are said 

 to have been planted there seven centu- 

 ries ago or more. The olive near the 

 gate-way of the Certosa monastery at 

 Calci, shown in one of our illustrations, 

 is many centuries old, and continues in 

 its prime, not showing any signs of 

 decay. In the olive wood on the hill- 

 side close by, formerly the property of 

 the monastery, there are many trees, 

 from three to four centuries old, which 

 are still in full bearing. Some of the 

 Saracenic olive-trees of Sicily are of very 

 great age and extraordinary size ; the 

 trunk of one was found to measure 

 twenty-six feet in girth, according to 

 Prof. Aloi, who also states that some 

 of these trees are known to have pro- 

 duced nearly twenty-eight bushels of 

 olives each at a crop. 



But in the aggregate the life of the 

 olive-tree is estimated at from 100 to 

 1 50 years. 



Its Enemies. 



Frosts, as we have seen, are very de- 

 structive ; many trees are blown down, 

 a circumstance arising from the fact 

 that olives are often to be found in hilly 

 localities. The tree is subject to at- 

 tacks from a variety of insect pests, 

 some of which injure the leaves, others 

 the fruit, branches, or trunk. Amongst 

 the worst of these may be mentioned 

 the cossus ligniperda, which, however, 

 does not confine its ravages to the olive- 

 tree. In its grub state the cossus is 

 provided with powerful mandibles and 

 eats its way into the heart of a tree, 

 causing its ultimate destruction. 



