Page:A Practical Treatise on Olive Culture, Oil Making and Olive Pickling.djvu/77

 while a wine cellar should be built with stones or bricks, or be exposed to the danger of having the wine damaged or spoiled during the summer months, if it has not been sold before that time.

The gathering of the olive crop, too, is a very easy and cheap work. The berries that have fallen to the ground are first picked, then the tree is shaken and the branches struck with long poles to cause the fall of the remaining fruit. The few of them that may be found a little moulded, by a too long contact with the earth, though good enough to make good oil, are generally set apart to be used only with the last pressures, when the lower grade of oil is made. Let us compare this easy and rapid work, where, nothing is lost, with the picking of grapes, or the product of most of fruit trees, which necessitates a certain number of hands at a given time, and requires special care, so as not to spoil part of it, while the fruit found on the ground is not marketable, if not entirely worthless.

When the oil is made, the residues, or marcs, are used for fuel, manuring, or feed for horses and cattle. There is, thus, not a farthing's worth of value in the product of the olive tree that is not turned to some use.

The bitterness of the fruit of the olive, of its bark and leaves, offers by itself a certain amount of protection against the attacks of insects and animals; and, when the tree is planted on hills, where it should be, far from moist places which