Page:The Olive Its Culture in Theory and Practice.djvu/16

14 Some of the other Mediterranean countries produce oil, but it is entirely consumed at home or exported from one to the other. The total production of oil then is:

of which Italy and Spain together furnish thirty million gallons only for export.

The population of Europe is three hundred and thirty-nine millions of people, more than enough to consume their own oil.

It is plain that France is a large importer. Such is the fact. The entire Spanish surplus and the bulk of that of Italy finds its way into France. Hence the impudence of a French export of olive oil; its own supply being a failing one and insufficient for domestic consumption.

From these figures it is plain that California has little to fear from foreign competition. In addition to this France has been steadily retrograding as an oil producing country since 1793. In the ten years preceding 1876, seventy-five thousand acres in the Maritime Alps, abandoned olive cultivation for that of cereals, fruits, flowers, the vine and the mulberry, as requiring less care and so yielding a better return. In Africa also, the cultivation has been generally given up, the climate being too humid and the latitude too far south.

It is quite natural that with the increase of geographical knowledge new and more favorable regions should be discovered where the cultivation of this noble tree may flourish on a greater scale than ever. With reason we flatter ourselves that California is such a spot. Mr. Goodrich, to whose searching observation we are so largely indebted, notices a marked difference in point of size between