Page:A Practical Treatise on Olive Culture, Oil Making and Olive Pickling.djvu/13

 places, does not grow well in valley lands, low and wet, or where water stands. Its fruit corresponds to the soil where it is planted; in rich and moist land it gives a heavy and fatty oil; in the warm and dry soils the oil will be finer; in the marly and clayey soils it produces less.

p. 106.: It can be easily understood why it cannot be planted in regular lines or rocky situations, where one utilizes even the interstices of rock, and where there is hardly enough earth to cover the roots.

Coutance. p. 177.: The best soils, where the fertility of cereals is so great, are not the proper ones for the olive tree, not that it will not grow in them, but because an exaggerated ligneous development will take place at the expense of the richness of its fruits. The quality of the oil will likewise be affected. M. Cappy establishes on this point the difference noticeable between the products of the olive trees of the fertile plains of Calabria and those of the stony hills of Lucca; between the products of the plains of Salon, in France, and those of the rocky hills of Marseilles and Montpellier.

The olive is the only tree for the arid, steep and rocky hills of the Mediterranean shores. The ancients knew this well. Mangon insists on the necessity of planting it on a dry soil. Lucilius Junior, Virgil, Columelle, and many others make the same point.