Olive

The unripe fruit of the olive is largely used in modern as in ancient times as dessert, to enhance the flavour of wine, and to renew the sensitiveness of the palate for other viands. For this purpose the fruit is picked while green, soaked for a few hours in an alkaline lye washed well in clean water and then placed in bottles or jars filled with brine.

In England the olive is not hardy, though in the southern coun ties, it will stand ordinary winters with only the protection of a wall, and will bear fruit in such situations.

The genus Olea includes several other species of some economic importance. 0. paniculata is a larger tree, attaining a height of 5o or 6o ft. in the forests of Queensland, and yielding a hard and tough timber. The yet harder wood of 0. laurifolia, an in habitant of Natal, is the black ironwood of the South African colonist.

Distribution.

At what remote period of human progress the wild olive became the fruitful garden olive it is impossible to conjecture. The frequent reference in the Bible to the plant and its produce, its implied abundance in the land of Canaan, the im portant place it has always held in Syria, lead us to consider that country the birthplace of the cultivated olive. An improved variety, possessed at first by some small Semitic sect, it was prob ably slowly distributed to adjacent tribes; and, yielding profusely, with little labour, a valuable oil, the gift of the fruitful tree be came in that primitive age a symbol of peace and goodwill among the warlike barbarians. At a later period, with the development of maritime enterprise, the oil was conveyed, as an article of trade, to the neighbouring Pelasgic and Ionian nations, and the plant, doubtless, soon followed. In the Homeric world as depicted in the Iliad, olive oil is known only as a luxury of the wealthy, an exotic product prized chiefly for its value in the heroic toilet, but there is no mention of the cultivation of the tree. Whenever it may have been introduced, tradition points to the limestone hills of Attica as the seat of its first cultivation on the Greek peninsula. By the time of Solon the olive had so spread that he found it necessary to enact laws to regulate the cultivation of the tree in Attica, from which country it was probably distributed gradually to all the Athenian allies and tributary states. To the Ionian coast, where it abounded in the time of Thales, it may have been in an earlier age brought by Phoenician vessels ; the olives of Rhodes and Crete had perhaps a similar origin. Samos, if we may judge from the epithet of Aeschylus (aatockvros), must have had the fruitful plant long before the Persian wars.

It is not unlikely that the olive was taken to Magna Graecia by the first Achaean colonists, and the assertion of Pliny (quoted from Fenestella), that no olives existed in Italy in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, must be received with caution. In Latin Italy the cultivation seems to have spread slowly, for it was not until the consulship of Pompey that the production of oil became suf ficient to permit of its exportation. In Pliny's time it was already grown abundantly in the two Gallic provinces and in Spain ; in deed, in the earlier days of Strabo the Ligurians supplied the Alpine barbarians with oil, in exchange for the wild produce of their mountains. Africa was indebted for the olive mainly to

Semitic agencies. Along the southern shore of the Mediterranean the tree was carried by the Phoenicians, at a remote period, to their numerous colonies in Africa. The tree was most likely intro duced into southern Spain, and perhaps into Sardinia and the Balearic Islands, by Phoenician merchants.

Yielding a substitute for the butter and animal fats consumed by the races of the north, the olive, among the southern nations of antiquity, became an emblem not only of peace but of national wealth and domestic plenty; the branches borne in the Panathe naea, the wild olive spray of the Olympic victor, the olive crown of the Roman conqueror at ovation, and those of the equites at their imperial review alike typified gifts of peace that, in a bar barous age, could be secured by victory alone. Among the Greeks the oil was valued as an important article of diet, as well as for its external use. The Roman people employed it largely in food and cookery—the wealthy as an indispensable adjunct to the toilet ; and in the luxurious days of the later empire it became a favourite axiom that long and pleasant life depended on two fluids, "wine within and oil without." Pliny vaguely describes 15 vari eties of olive cultivated in his day. The gourmet of the empire valued the unripe fruit, steeped in brine, no less than his modern representative; and pickled olives have been found among the buried stores of Pompeii.

In modern times the olive has been spread widely over the world; and, though the Mediterranean lands that were its ancient home still yield the chief supply of the oil, the tree is now culti vated successfully in many regions unknown to its early dis tributors. Soon after the discovery of the American continent it was conveyed thither by the Spanish settlers. In Chile it flour ishes as luxuriantly as in its native land, the trunk sometimes becoming of large girth, while oil of fair quality is yielded by the fruit; to Peru it was carried at a later date. Introduced into Mexico by the Jesuit missionaries of the 17th century, it was planted by similar agency in California, where it is now an impor tant crop. Its cultivation is also carried on in the south-eastern states, especially in South Carolina, Florida and Mississippi. In the eastern hemisphere the olive has been established in many in land districts which would have been anciently considered ill adapted for its culture. To Armenia and Persia it was known at a comparatively early period of history, and many olive-yards now exist in upper Egypt. The tree has been introduced into Chinese agriculture, and has become an important addition to the resources of the Australian planter. In Queensland the olive has found a climate specially suited to its wants ; in South Australia, near Adelaide, it also grows vigorously; it has likewise been success fully introduced into parts of Cape Colony.