696 
THE OLIVE. 
tested. The apathy of Southern planters generally, respecting 
all products hut cotton and rice, is the only reason for the tardy 
manner in which this and other valuable trees are introduced 
into cultivation there. 
The uses and value of the olive-oil are still comparatively 
unknown in this country. In the South of Europe it is more 
valuable than bread, as, to say nothing of its wholesomeness, it 
enters into every kind of cookery, and renders so large a quan- 
tity of vegetable food fit for use. A few olive trees will serve 
for the support of an entire family, who would starve on what 
could otherwise be raised on the same surface of soil ; and dry 
crevices of rocks, and almost otherwise barren soils in the 
deserts, when planted with this tree, become flourishing and 
valuable places of habitation. 
The olive is a native of the temperate sea-coast ridges of Asia 
and Africa; but it has, time out of mind, been cultivated in the 
South of Europe. It is a low evergreen tree, scarcely twenty 
feet high, its head spreading, and clothed with stiff, narrow, 
bluish green leaves. Its dark green or black fruit is oval, the 
hard fleshy pulp enclosing a stone. In a pickled state the fruit 
is highly esteemed. The pickles are made by steeping the 
unripe olives in ley water, after which they are washed and 
bottled in salt and water, to which is often added fennel, or 
some kind of spice. The oil is made by crushing the fruit to a 
paste, pressing it through a coarse hempen bag, into hot water, 
from the surface of which the oil is skimmed off. The best oil 
is made from the pulp alone : when the stone also is crushed, it 
is inferiour. 
Propagation and Culture. — A very common mode of pro- 
pagating the olive in Italy, is by means of the uovoli (little 
eggs). These are knots or tumours, which form in considera- 
ble numbers on the bark of the trunk, and are easily detached 
by girdling them with a pen-knife, the mother plant suffering 
no injury. They are planted in the soil like bulbs, an inch or 
so deep, when they take root and form new trees. It is also 
propagated by cuttings and seeds. The seedlings form the 
strongest and thriftiest trees ; they are frequently some months 
in vegetating, and should therefore be buried an inch deep in 
the soil as soon as ripe. 
The wild American olive ( Olea Americana , L.) or Devil-wood, 
a tree that grows more or less abundantly as far north as Vir- 
ginia, will undoubtedly prove a good stock, on which to engraft 
the European olive. It is of a hardier habit, and though worth- 
less itself, may become valuable in this way. 
The olive-tree commences bearing five or six years after being 
planted. Its ordinary crop is fifteen or twenty pounds of oil 
per annum, and the regularity of its crop, as well as the great 
age to which it lives, renders an olive plantation one of the most 
