OLIVE T R E E. 
103 
amounts in weight to nearly one-third of the fruit. The mean produce of 
a tree may be assumed, in .France, at ten pounds, and in Italy at fifteen : 
but single trees have been known in the productive season to yield three 
hundred pounds. 
•The kernel of the olive affords an oil, the mixture of which with that of 
the pulp is said to injure its flavor and to hasten its rancidity. A machine 
has, in consequence, been invented for bruising the pulp without crushing 
the stone : that the arguments for its adoption have not prevailed over the 
established usage is no proof of their unsoundness ; more convincing evi- 
dence is found* in the exquisite quality of the oil of Aix. 
But there are abuses which experience has demonstrated without being 
able to correct them: the fruit, after hanging too long upon the trees, is 
kept fermenting in heaps, to increase the quantity of oil, while the only 
effect is to vitiate its quality. 
Besides the finest oil whieh is used upon the table, immense quantities 
are employed in the making of soap and for mechanical purposes. A part 
of the oil consumed in this way at Marseilles is imported from Greece 
and the Mediterranean Isles. 
The Olive requires a climate whose mean temperature i,s equal to 57° 
17', and that of the coldest month to 41° 5C In the United States, where 
the mean temperature of the year is 57° 17', that of the coldest month is 
only 0° 5', with some days far more intense. The capriciousness of our 
climate is still more dangerous to delicate vegetables than its inclemency ; 
the difference of temperature in a single day is sometimes almost equal to 
that of the whole year in the south of Italy. The Olives near Charleston 
were rendered barren by the vernal frosts which congealed the young 
shoots. In a more southern latitude they would be secure in the winter, 
but they would languish through a sultry summer, unrefreshed by the 
healthful breezes which they respire on the shores of the Mediterranean 
Sea ; they would, besides-, find a silicious instead of a calcareous soil. 
While the Floridas were held by the English, an adventurer of that 
nation led a colony of Greeks into the eastern province, and founded the 
settlement of New Smyrna : the principal treasure which they brought from 
their native clime was the Olive. Bartram, who visited this settlement in 
1775, describes it as a flourishing town. Its prosperity, however, was of 
momentary duration : driven to despair by hardship and oppression, and 
precluded from escape by land, where they were intercepted by the wan- 
dering savages, a part of these unhappy exiles conceived the hardy enter- 
prise of flying to the Havanna in an open boat; the rest removed to 
St. Augustine when the Spaniards resumed possession of the country. In 
1783, a few decaying huts, and several large Olives, were the only remain- 
ing traces of their industry. 
Louisiana, the Floridas, the islands of Georgia, and chosen exposures in 
