Spec. Plant Willd. i. 44.

Cl. 2. Ord. 1. Diandria Monogynia. Nat. ord. Oleaceae.

G. 36. Corolla four-cleft, with subovate segments. Drupe one-seeded.

Species!. O. Europaea.1 European Olive. Med. Dot. 3d edit. 280. t. 93. Sibthorp, Flora Graeca, t. 3.

Officinal. Olivae oleum, Lond. Oleae Europaeae oleum fixum, Edin. Oleum ex fructu, Dub. The Oil of the Olive.

Syn. Huile d'Olive (F.), Olivenhol (G.), Olyfoly (Dutch), Bamolja (Swed.), Oglio d'Ulive (I.), Azeite (S), Zeet (A.), Iaban Zcitan Agazi (Turkish).

The olive-tree is a native of Asia and the north of Africa, where it is named Zituna; but it is cultivated abundantly in the Greek islands near Smyrna, in France, Spain, and Italy. It has been raised in the open air in England, but its fruit, it is said, has never been ripened.2 It grows upon the most rocky, calcareous soil, seldom exceeds twenty feet in height, and has a solid, upright, much-branched stem, covered with a grey bark: the leaves are evergreen, opposite, spreading, nearly sessile, stiffish, lanceolate, entire, from two to three inches long, and scarcely half an inch broad in the middle, with the margin a little turned back; of a full green colour, smooth and even on the upper surface, and pale on the under. The flowers are in opposite, axillary clusters, half the length of the leaves, on short flower-stalks, with small, concave, obtuse, hoary bractes: the calyx is deciduous, four-cleft, and regular: the corolla white, four-parted, regular, spreading; with ovate, obtuse, obscurely three-nerved segments; the stamens are shorter than the corolla, divaricated, supporting large pale-yellow, elliptical anthers; the stigma is bipartite on an erect style, rising from a roundish, superior germen; the fruit is a smooth oval plum, or drupe, about three fourths of an inch in length, and half an inch in diameter; of a deep of the modern Greeks. Unclarified oil is called oglio misto, the clarified oglio chiaro in Italy.

Dioscoridis.

2 Miller's Gardener's Dictionary, ed. 1797, art. Olea. 1 have been informed, however, that it has ripened its fruit in Devonshire. The olive attains to a great age. Chateaubriand says that in the olive garden at Jerusalem are eight olive trees, which pay one media only each to the Grand Seigneur, a proof that they were in existence and bearing fruit before the Turkish invasion, as all olives planted since that time pay half their annual crop. There is an olive tree at Pescio, in Italy, 700 hundred years old, and 25 feet in circumference.

violet colour when ripe, whitish and fleshy within, bitter and nauseous, but replete with a bland oil1, and covering an osseous, oblong, pointed, rough nut. There is a variety with shorter, almost obovate leaves.2

There are several varieties of the olive tree, of which the , variety 7, or longifolia of Willdenow, is most esteemed, as affording the best oil. The young plant bears at two years old, and at six years is in full bearing; but the best oil is procured from the fruit of trees which have been grafted. The value of the tree continues to increase until it has passed its one hundredth year, after which it declines. The mode of obtaining the oil from the ripe fruit was known very early in Egypt; and it is chiefly for this purpose that the tree is now cultivated in Spain, Provence, and Italy. To procure the oil, the ripe fruit is gathered in November, and immediately bruised in a mill, the stones of which are set so wide as not to crush the nut. The pulp is then subjected to the press in bags made of rushes; and, by means of a gentle pressure, the best oil, which is called virgin oil, flows first; a second sort is got by breaking the marc, moistening it with warm water, and returning it to the press; and lastly, a very inferior kind is obtained, either by boiling the magma, or by breaking, moistening, and fermenting it in large cisterns, and again submitting it to the full force of the press.

When the olive is not sufficiently ripe, the recent oil has a bitterish taste, and when too ripe it is thick and glutinous. After the oil is drawn, it deposits by standing a white, fibrous, albuminous matter; from this the clear oil is poured off, and a second deposition takes place; after which, if put into clean glass flasks, there is no further alteration.3

The best oil is made in Provence, its excellence arising from the olives being carefully cleaned and garbled: but what we receive in this country comes from Lucca and Florence. Sicily also furnishes some, but it has a resinous flavour.4 Good oil has lately been brought from Samos. Much of its goodness depends on the place where the oil is kept: on this account the oil of Gallipoli, which is kept in caverns cut in the rock, is excellent. The oil has been good after seven years in the Gallipolian cisterns. It is imported in jars, half-jars, and what are called half-chests, which are wooden packages containing flasks.1

1 The unripe fruit, when pickled in a strong solution of common salt, is a well-known luxury of the table.

2 The wild olive is distinguished by the more oval shining leaf, the flower exactly similar to the cultivated, the leaves of which are lanceolate, and remarkably grey in appearance compared to the wild.

3 A very old olive-tree, near Gerecomio, yielded 240 English quarts of oil, in 1809. Three. Months near Rome, by Maria Graham, p. 49.

4 This flavour has been ascribed to the Sicilian olives being grown on dry hilly situations. Galt's Letters from the Levant, 8vo. p. 129.

Qualities.-Pure olive oil is an insipid, inodorous, pale, greenish-yellow coloured, viscid fluid; unctuous to the feel; inflammable, incapable of combining with water, and nearly insoluble in alcohol. It is fixed in any temperature under 600°, suffering considerable expansion, but not evaporating; and congeals at 38° of Fahrenheit. It is the lightest of the fixed oils, its specific gravity being 0.9153. When kept for a great length of time, or much exposed to the air, its components 2 are partially separated, the sebacic acid and water are formed, and the oil acquires a disagreeable smell and sharp taste, becomes thick, brown-coloured, and is then said to be rancid. The rancidity is hastened by heat, and by the admixture of poppy oil, with which it is often adulterated. The purity of olive oil is readily discovered by adding to twelve parts of the suspected oil one part of a solution of protonitrate of mercury3, and then shaking them strongly together every ten minutes for two hours, after which the mixture is left at rest.

The nitrate solidifies olive oil, but leaves the oils of poppy, of linseed, or of other grains, liquid.

Medical properties and uses. - Olive oil is demulcent, relaxant, and laxative. It is used internally as a demulcent in catarrh and other pulmonary affections, diffused in water by means of mucilage; and is also given internally, in large quantities, to mitigate the action of acrid substances, as some poisons, taken into the stomach; and in cases of worms. Externally applied, it is a very useful relaxant, and instead of stopping up the cutaneous exhalants, appears to promote the excretion of sweat; on which account it has been employed with great advantages in frictions in the commencement of plague. The body is ordered to be very briskly rubbed all over with a clean sponge dipped in warm olive oil: copious perspiration generally follows, and the operation must be repeated once a day until symptoms of recovery appear Mr. Jackson relates that the Coolies, who are employed in the oil stores at Tunis, smear themselves all over with oil, and are seldom afflicted with the plague when it rages in that city1: an effect which may be owing to the oil forming a coating to the skin, bo that it cannot come directly in contact with the contagion.

Frictions with it are useful in ascites.2 It is, however, more generally used as a vehicle for more active substances, in the formation of embrocation: thus, it is an excellent solvent of opium, which can, through its means only, be used in frictions with any advantage.3 It is also used as an injection in gonorrhoea, and as an adjunct to glysters in dysentery and intestinal abrasions. It is extensively used in pharmacy, in the composition of ointments, cerates, and plasters.

1 4,158,000 gallons were imported into England in 1881. 2 Vide Expressed Oils.

3 This nitrate is prepared by dissolving, without heat, 6 parts of mercury in 7 1/2 of nitric acid, sp. grav, 1.38.

The dose of olive oil is from f3j. to f j., triturated with mucilage, or mixed with water by means of a few drops of solution of potassa. In cases of poisons or of worms, as much may be given as the stomach can bear.