THE OLIVE IN CALIFORNIA. 



A MARVELOUS FRUIT INDUSTRY. 



HE yearly olive crop of 

 Southern Europe is 

 said to represent a 

 value of nearly fifty 

 million dollars. If 

 California becomes in 

 the course of time the 

 Italy of America, sup- 

 plying olives for the 

 continent, the annual 

 crop will be worth 

 more money than the present output of all the gold 

 and silver mines of the Pacific coast. No other 

 horticultural industry is capable of greater finan- 

 cial returns, and none promises to add more to the 

 food resources of California. 



The olive will amply reward all planters, from peasant 

 to millionaire. In fact, it is peculiarly the poor man's 

 fruit, supplying the place of butter and meats, and en- 

 abling the laborer to perform hard work upon a diet of 

 "bread and olives." 



Considering the peculiar fitness of the olive to the 

 California region, it is not surprising that the subject 

 has been one of constant interest ever since the first 

 settlement of the land west of the Sierras and south of 

 the Siskiyous. Spanish priests, as writers have often ex- 

 plained, transplanted the olive 

 and many other fruits to the 

 warmer districts of Alta Cali- 

 fornia, and established most 

 beautiful avenues and orchards 

 near the old missions, and in 

 some of the pueblos. The lead- 

 ing variety that they planted 

 was a hardy and excellent sort, 

 the Cornizuelo of Spain, now 

 locally known as the Mission 

 and long thought to be a seed- 

 ling. It is excellent for oil, and 

 makes a rich pickled olive. In 

 the southern parts of the state 

 there are few orchard sorts that 

 equal it in profit or productive- 

 ness. Its drawbacks are two : 

 it is rooted with difficulty from 

 cuttings, even under favorable 

 circumstances ; and in point of ripening, there are many 

 earlier varieties than this. 



The cultivated olive, however, comprises many choice 

 varieties, each of which is adapted to a different dis- 



trict, and every effort is now being made to import and 

 test them all. Some promise to extend the culture of 

 the olive much further than was thought possible ; others 

 give finer fruit, bear earlier, or are of easier growth 

 than the older sorts. A rapid increase of plantations 

 is now going on in the leading orchard districts of the 

 state, and in a few years more the olive industry will 

 attract fully as much attention as the grape, prune, 

 orange or lemon industries do now. 



Nomenclature, long in confusion, is slowly advancing 

 as importations from the olive centers of the Mediter- 

 ranean countries begin to come into bearing. Growers 

 are discovering better and more efficient methods of 

 culture, and of preparation of the olive products for 

 market. For thirty years past an increasing number of 

 writers continued urging the planting of the olive, until 

 men's pulses were somewhat stirred, and in due season 

 those who were actually making plantations began to 

 report results in horticultural meetings, and through 

 daily, weekly and monthly publications. 



Every warm valley and windless hillside will have 

 its orchards of ripening olives, and every child will 

 carry a handful of olives to school for lunch-hour. The 

 sacred old-world tree will come at last to occupy as 

 large a part of Californian life as it does of the life of 

 Italy or Spain. 



Nothing in the more recent history of the olive in 

 California is more encouraging than the way in which 



wild lands, lately thought worthless, are being util- 

 ized. A lady, Gessima Leigh, of Butte county, writes 

 as follows to the Rural Press: "Three years ago we 

 decided to transform our very poor grain-field of seven 



