Pickles are those articles of food, fruit or vegetables, which are preserved by immersion in vinegar, with or without the addition of salt or spices. Cucumber and green tomato pickles are the commonest varieties. When vegetables are mixed, as with chow-chow, piccalilli and “mixed pickles,” cucumbers, small onions, green beans, cabbage, pepper-pods, cauliflower and various spices are used. Fruits, such as apple, melon, peach, crab-apple and pear are also pickled. Pickled sanphire, although at one time popularly used as a condiment, is now little known outside of England. It is a variety of sea-weed and grows upon dangerous and rocky cliffs. Shakespeare refers to “the sanphire gatherer’s dangerous trade,” and another poet has apostrophized the “Green girdles and crowns of the sea gods, Cool blossoms of water and foam,” quite omitting to mention the fact that the “girdles and crowns” make, when chopped and packed in vinegar, a most delicious pickle. Unlike most condiments, this is, as are all seaweeds, nutritious. The people of the Sandwich Islands, as well as the English, consider sanphire, both the true and false varieties, a choice condiment. It is specially liked when served with mutton. One of the choicest of condiments is the olive. It is the fruit of an evergreen tree, native to Syria and lower Asia but now cultivated extensively in southern Europe and California. Unlike most pickles it may be classed as a food, owing to the oil contained. The fruit is picked by hand and carefully sorted about six weeks before it would ripen. It is first placed in strong lye for about twenty-four hours, then removed to fresh water where it may remain several days. After several washings in fresh water the olives are removed and packed in brine. They are ready for use in from one to three months. The residents of the olive districts both in Greece, Spain, and in California often prefer the olive preserved after it has ripened, the oil having then matured and the flavor being finer. Among the export trade there is much prejudice against it owing to its dull, black color. Olives should be of good color, crisp and firm, but never tough. The Spanish and Italian olives are widely popular but are really no finer than the best California products. The candle-nut, used as a relish and somewhat resembling a green walnut, is the fruit of a tropical tree. It is chopped fine, packed in jars, or bottled, with salt added. As a relish it is highly prized, specially by the natives of the Sandwich Islands. [Illustration: Candle-nut.]