I 
OLIVE TREE. 97 
the germination of the kernel, which, in the meantime, becomes rancid 
and loses its fecundity. > 
Ripe fruit of the finest varieties is selected ; that of the Gros Ribiés is 
the best ; and the stones, after being separated from the pulp, are cleansed 
in an alkaline solution. A sheltered situation is chosen, where the earth 
is thoroughly loosened to the depth of 3 feet, and enriched with the warm- 
est manures. In the month of March the stones are sown, at a small dis- 
tance apart, in trenches 2 or 3 inches deep, and covered "with earth. The 
soil should be kept free from herbage, and occasionally watered during the 
summer. The young plants appear in October and continue to vegetate 
through the winter ; by the following spring, the most thriving among them 
will have attained the height of 30 inches. The feebler stocks should now 
be eradicated. With proper attention, and in a favorable soil, the remain- 
der will be 4 or 5 feet high and 6 or 7 lines in diameter, in the course of 
the third spring, with a perpendicular root of 30 inches. This is the sea- 
son for transplanting them. Great care should be bestowed upon the pre- 
paration of the ground, and the young plants should be placed 3 feet apart. 
After two years they will be sufficiently advanced to be grafted, and at the 
end of five years they may be transplanted to the olive-yard. 
To accelerate the germination, the stones may be kept in fine mould dur- 
ing the summer and autumn, and sown in the beginning of January. 
They soon begin to vegetate, and before the following winter the young 
stocks acquire strength enough to support its rigors, while the tender plant 
that comes up in October is in danger of suffering by the slightest hoar- 
frost. Perhaps some advantage would be found in reducing the thickness 
of the shell before it is committed to the ground, in order to expose the 
germ more speedily to the influence of those agents which are necessary to 
its expansion. 
Every mode of grafting is successfully practised on the Olive : the most 
common and the most proper for young stocks is that of inoculation. The 
operation should be performed in May, while the juices are in active cir- 
culation. Different opinions prevail respecting the insertion of the graft 
above or below the surface of the ground: grafting below the surface is 
attended with this advantage, that, when the trunk is destroyed, a generous 
progeny springs from its base. 
A few stocks should be left to form new varieties. Fruit trees and flow- 
ers lose, in reproduction, the properties wffiich they had acquired by cul- 
ture, and tend anew to the state of nature. But in a great number of 
plants reared from the seed, a few are found that equal or excel the parent : 
florists consider themselves as fortunate, if, among a thousand Hyacinths 
or Tulips, they obtain three or four deserving of notice. 
The young Olives begin to yield fruit the 10th or 12th year, and are 
fully productive about the 25th or 30th : thus Hesiod’s observation, that no 
