Page:A Practical Treatise on Olive Culture, Oil Making and Olive Pickling.djvu/73



In preparing for the public this brief treatise on olive culture, written from a Californian point of view, it was my object to enable agriculturists and capitalists, who desire to avail themselves of the unique advantages it has over any other culture, to form a correct idea of its general features, from the choice of the land most suitable for the olive tree to the marketing of its product.

With this in view I thought it better to avoid lengthy demonstrations, or superfluous details, such as abound in some agricultural publications, the greater part of which is generally filled with diffuse and extraneous matter, which causes the reader to glance hurriedly from page to page, and to reach the last without having noticed what there can be of real interest in them.

I also found it necessary to consult the works of the best known writers on olive culture, and to quote them freely, placing them side by side with my personal observations, so as to add the weight of their acknowledged authority to my own statements. I thus hope that this treatise, which