Page:A Practical Treatise on Olive Culture, Oil Making and Olive Pickling.djvu/47

 are already well known in California if, in years to come, it is satisfactorily demonstrated to us that better ones have been acclimatized, it will always be in order to use them for grafting our trees, after the experiments, which are generally pretty costly in agriculture, will have been made by those who have time and money to risk in that beneficent manner.

We have therefore at present these three varieties pretty generally known: The Picholine, the Mission and the Queen, or Reyna. We will take them by turn and quote what the writers most reputed on the subject have to say of them.

Reynaud. Picholine, called also Colliasse. This variety was named after Picholini, of Saint Chamas, France, an intelligent agriculturist of the last century, who was the first to graft the Sauvageon on the Saourin and obtained such good results therefrom that a sort of enthusiasm seized the whole country in favor of that practice which has been quite generally followed ever since. In the Gard district, from the plains to the top of the mountains, even in the fissures of the rocks, every spot where there is but a little vegetal earth is covered with this variety of the olive. It should also be said that the Picholine, amongst all other varieties is the one that seems to be the least subject to the attacks of insects. It is known to bear in much greater abundance than the more common trees of the country.