Among the fruits of Italy most deserving of particular notice, must be ranked the grapes and olives; which are cultivated so generally and on so great a scale, as to come properly under the head of agricultural produce. In many farms, corn, wine, and oil, are equally the objects of atten tion ; and the fields which bear the grain and pulse are lit tle more than ridges, or narrow stripes between the rows of olive•trees, or of poplars and elms clothed with the vine. The vines are also in many places, particularly at Taranto, kept low upon pales; but little care is taken in selecting the grape, according to.its quality; and the modern wines of Italy, except in some of the southern districts, are so very inferior to what the ancient vintage must be supposed to have produced, that the inferiority has been ascribed to an alleged change in the climate. But, even in the days of Pliny, the two most celebrated of the ancient wines, the Ckreuban and the Falernian, had lost much of their excel lence; the former, in consequence of a canal cut by Nero across the vale or Amyclx, where it was produced; and the latter, in consequence of the cultivators being induced, by the great demand, to pay more attention to the quantity than the quality of their produce. In the Ecclesiastical states particularly, it is a practice to put a great quantity of water into the vat along with the grape, which renders the wine, though otherwise good, unfit for exportation or long keep ing. The modern Italians also, being habitually sober, and using wine chiefly for the purpose of quenching thirst, are not very careful of the qualities of their wines, and are quite satisfied if they ale not new, flat, or unwholesome. They are generally either too racy or too luscious for the taste of the European nations. • The olive is cultivated very generally in Tuscany ; and particularly in the southern provinces of Bari, Otranto, Ca labria, and Abruzzo. Six hundred thousand sahnelf of oil ate estimated as the annual produce of the Neapolitan do minions, of which more han one half is consumed within the kingdom. Olive plantations extend along the whole coast of Bari; and at Biseglia, a small town of this province, the olives are equal to the finest produced at Seville. But it is at Gallipoli, in t he province of Otranto, that the greatest attention is paid to the culture of the olive, and the prepara tion of the oil A lightish clay soil, dry situation, and sloping exposure to the south, sheltered as much as possi ble from winds, is considered as most eligible for the cul tivation of the olive. The plant is propagated in a great variety of ways; by grafting slips or runners from the roots upon the wild olive tree, which then yields fruit in three years; by planting very deep in the earth a branch of a bearing tree, which in ten years becomes a profitable tree ; by putting small shoots into the ground, which are trans planted in the third yenr, and bears fully in years; or by slipping off shoots from the stem of a bearing tree in such a manner as to take a part of the parent stock along with them, and planting them in a nursery, to he removed into the olive grounds in the third or fourth year. Too little attention is paid to the quality of the olives which are propagated; but the two prevailing kinds are the Salentina, which yields the best fruit, though it is very subject to the blight ; and the Cellina, which, though less productive of oil, yet grows to a greater size, and is less liable to be in jured by the weather. Where the trees are not pruned, which is the case in Calabria, they grow to a great height, but yield a smaller quantity of fruit. It is the practice, however, to cut out the central branches; and, without leaving any leading stems, to give the whole a bushy spread ing form. The ground is dug around the trees upon the hills in the beginning of the year, and a quantity of fine ma nure applied to the roots; but the plantations on level grounds are sufficiently tilled by the crops which are raised between the rows, generally of wheat for two successive years, and fallow during the third. The olive is sufficient ly ripe for the table in the month of October, but not for making oil till the end of December. The quality of the oil is greatly injured by the practice (which is very com mon, except at Taranto) of allowing the fruit to hang on the tree till it drop, which often does not take place till the end of March, or beginning of April. In Calabria, the fruit is also suffered to remain on the ground after it has dropped, sometimes so long as the month of June, so that much of it is rotted, and the rest produces a very inferior kind of oil. This negligence is principally owing to the obligation laid on the vassals of carrying their olives to be bruised at the mills of their baron, which are usually too few in number for the•purpose ; and the cultivators seem to think the olives as safe on the ground, as in the fermenting heaps, waiting for their turn at the mill.
In Italy, all the fruits common in the more temperate countries of Europe are produced in the greatest abun name and the highest perfection, besides many other pro ductions which properly belong to more southern latitudes. Apples, pears, peaches, apricots, pine-apples, medlars, pomegranates, melons, red and yellow azarol-plums, cher ries, almonds, dates, figs, ehesnuts, pistachio nuts, carobs, lemons, citrons, oranges, are commonly produced through out the country, and many of them without culture. Cher ries have been known to be so abundant at Nocera, that hands have been wanting to gather them, and so cheap as not to repay their carriage to Naples ; so that the owners of orchards have invited the public to eat and carry away what quantities they pleased.—Date trees were formerly
more abundant in the south of Italy ; but the Saracens cut down most of the male-palms at the time of their expul sion from the country, and even the Christians were ready to wreak their vengeance on the plant, as if peculiarly con nected with •ahommedanism. They are still found in some places to the height of 40 feet, but their fruit rarely ripens well, except when the sirocco and other southerly winds prevail much during the season.—Fig trees attain a considerable size, and are found in great variety in the country ;•ut those which are earliest ripe are most esteem ed. They are generally propagated by slips, planted in a shady place, and regularly watered. Though the wild plant abounds every where, so as to afford easy opportuni ties of caprification, this method is rarely employed ; hut the Neapolitans ripen the fruit by touching the eye of it with a feather dipped in oil. Near Trani, the trees are planted in rows, and dressed like dwarfs and espaliers, ac cording to the practice of the ancients, which renders the fruit larger, and the trees more vigorous.—Almond trees appear in forests, especially along the eastern coast ; and the chief cultivation which they receive, is to stir the ground around the roots, and to prune out the central branches for the admission of the air.—The hazel-nut is cultivated in many places, especially in the principality of Avellina, hence called " Nux Avellana." Around the town are more nut-bushes than in any country whatever, which ate planted in rows in the best soil, regularly pruned in the form of bushes with straight stems; while the ground between the rows is dug and manured during winter, and generally sown with corn in the spring. So great is the produce, that the trade in nuts is said to bring annually 60,000 ducats,(L.11,250) to the town of Avellina.—Oranges are said to have been first cultivated at Reggio, and thence to have spread over the country. They are now found to thrive in the northern districts around the lakes of Como, Garda, and Maggiore, and even at the very foot of the Ap pennines, where there is often frost in the winter season strong enough to congeal water.• At Taranto, they are propagated by layers, a twig being stuck in a pot full of earth in the autumn, and, in the following May, severed from the parent stock for transplantation. It is generally six or eight years before the trees arrive at a full beating state.
Italy affords many vegetable productions, which scarce ly require any cultivation, yet yield a valuable article of home consumption, or of foreign trade. Among these may be noticed the drnus, or manna ash-tree, which grows spon taneously, requiring no other culture than cutting down the strong shoots around the trunk, and which continues to yield manna every year for the space of a century ; but, in consequence of these annual bleedings, seldom attains a considerable size. The gathering of the gum begins about the end of July, when a horizontal cut, inclining upwards, is made in the trunk of the tree, and repeated every day as long as any drops of manna exude, which are generally col lected in a kind of cup formed of a maple leaf. One tree will afford about a pound and a half of manna every season, which usually sells at the rate of five tali, or 4a. per pound. —In some of the maritime tracts of the south, liquorice is collected in great quantities, and the roots are now gene rally exported in their natural state.—ln Abruzzo, and of late also in Lombardy, saffron is an article of considerable attention to the peasantry.—A great variety of medicinal herbs are produced in the mountains of the Marsi in Ab ruzzo Ultra, which are annually frequented by apothecaries from the most distant parts of the country. The aloe grows abundantly in Terra di Otranto and other provinces in the south of Italy ; and, besides its medicinal juice, at tempts have been made, with considerable success, to ma nufacture a useful thread from its leaves, (see manufac tures in this article.) The Indian-fig, the carob-tree, the caper-bush, the cornelian-cherry, the bead-tree, the storax tree, are very commonly met with in the fields and uncul tiVated tracts. The cleander, the myrtle, the laburnum, the jasmine, the Judas-tree, the Spanish-broom, the beau trefoil, the provence-rose, the cinnamon-rose, the syringa. the laurustinus, the bay, the laurel, the lyldc, are a few of the flowering shrubs which adorn the Italian scenery. La vender, rosemary, rice, sumach, sage, euphorbia, tree heath, arbutus, campanula, and a multitude of interesting botanical beauties, abound in its varied surface. The natural vegt•;ation is, in most places, remarkably luxuriant. The Spanish-reed rises to a height which almost emulates the bamboo of India; and the ferula communis of Linnaeus grows to the length of twelve feet. Its branches are gath ered as fodder for asses, but are said to be hurtful to all other animals; and its stem is used for making chicken coops, bird-cages, hurdles for packing sheep, and other similar articles. The mountains are generally clothed with wood of every European species ; and in Apulia, par ticularly, are many forests of immense extent. That of Gioia is said to be fifty miles in circumference, and twenty four at its greatest breadth.