Soil
CHAPTER IV.
"Cet arbre vient sur tous les terraius."
"And first for heath and barren hilly ground,
Where meagre clay and flinty stones abound;
Where the poor soil all succor seems to want,
Yet this suffices the Palladian plant.
Undoubted signs of such a soil are found,
For here wild olive shoots o'erspread the ground
And heaps of berries strew the fields around."
The olive will live in almost any soil except a dry and compact, or a humid one. An analysis of the ashes of the wood, leaves, and fruit of this tree give the following result:
| WOOD. | LEAVES. | FRUIT. | |
| Potash | 20.60 | 24.81 | 53.03 |
| Lime | 63.02 | 56.18 | 15.72 |
| Magnesia | 2.31 | 5.18 | 4.38 |
| Sulphuric Acid | 3.09 | 3.01 | 1.19 |
| Silicate | 3.82 | 3.75 | 5.58 |
| Phosphoric Acid | 4.77 | 3.24 | 7.30 |
| Phosphate of Iron | 1.39 | 1.07 | 2.24 |
| Chloride of Potassum | 1.00 | 2.76 | 9.56 |
| 100.00 | 100.00 | 100.00 |
The berry, and especially the meaty part, contains a very large proportion of potash, while the wood and the leaves abound in lime. This is an important fact. The deduction from it is that a soil, rich in these ingredients, possesses all the conditions necessary for
