THE OLIVE 



27 



towards the ground, and even touch it, completely covering in the 

 trunk. The bark is of a gray green. The under side of the leaf 

 is a clear white and the upper a smooth dark green with the fibers 

 well marked. 



The berry is an inch and a half in height and three quarters of 

 an inch in diameter. It weighs five grams, is a black red in color 

 and is a clingstone. It gives a good oil, but is late in maturing 

 and needs twelve thousand seven hundred degrees of heat, in order 

 to ripen, from the time the flow T er ap]3ears until the olive is ready 

 for the mill. It needs a careful pruning and frequent clearings. 

 The wiser course is to cultivate thoroughly and give the tree fer- 

 tilizers rather than to prune closely in order to force the sap into 

 the bearing branches. 



In Spain it may be said to be the favorite olive, but in some of 

 the northern provinces where the tree is out of its element it gives 

 no fruit at all but only attains a colossal size and hence is classed 

 by the country people as a wild tree. But as we shall proceed to 

 show it has none of the attributes of the wild tree, so far from it 

 that it is one of the " oil press olives," one of the varieties most 

 highly domesticated and cultivated that the wwlcl knows. 



When olive culture and oil making come to be better understood, 

 where each variety is given the treatment it demands and olives are 

 gathered at the moment best suited for making the oil, we shall 

 probably hear less about the lateness of the Cornicabra in ripening 

 under a California sun. 



Racimal. 



A medium sized tree with branches that incline towards the 

 ground, and of abundant blossoms. Resists cold and grows steadily 

 in all kinds of soil. This is one of the earliest olives to ripen, gives 

 a good oil in fair quantity, but it is easily detached from the tree, 

 and many berries are lost on this account. It does not produce 

 every year, but is apt to only give a crop every other year 

 It needs especial care in pruning, for, although it is prodigal of 



