It is said that there is no district throughout the whole of Italy where the olive attains such a size as it does in the Balagna. The thickness of its stem, its abundance of branches, and the quantity of fruit it produces, are equally astonishing. It is mighty as a beech, and in the heat of noon you rest cool under its shelter. The olive is a tree that one cannot but love. It has not the imposing magnificence of the oak or the plane; its bole, its grayish green, long, narrow leaves, remind us of our own homely willow; but it is laden with riches—with the very fat of the earth, and it is associated with all the poetry of human culture. Sitting under a gray olive by the sea-strand, we are transported to the sacred, sunny East, where our fancy has been at home ever since we turned over the leaves of the picture-Bible, and heard a mother's stories of the Mount of Olives at Jerusalem. How often have we imagined to ourselves those olive-groves! Then, again, in the whispering of its branches, we hear the wisdom of Minerva, and the poetry of the Hellenes, and are borne away to the land of Homer, of Pindar, of Æschylus, to the Muses and gods of Olympus. The olive is thus doubly dear to us as at once a Christian and a Hellenic tree; its branch is more precious than that of the laurel, it is the beautiful symbol of prosperity and peace, and a man's first prayer to the immortal gods should be: Send into my life the green olive-branch. They send us all kinds of them, the laurel-branch, the myrtle-branch; and they send also the cypress-bough; with humility be the award received. There are various species of olives in the Balagna—the Sabine (_Sabinacci_), the Saracen (_Saraceni_), and the Genoese (_Genovesi_);—named according to their descent, like noble families of Signori. The third family is the most common. It is ascribed to the Genoese, who, during the government of Agostino Doria, compelled the Corsicans to plant olives in great numbers. This is therefore at least one beautiful and peaceful memorial of Genoese rule in Corsica. When the olive was first introduced into Corsica, I am unable to say. One of the complaints in the epigram of Seneca is, that the gift of Pallas does not exist on the island. Yet it appears to me hardly credible that the olive was not cultivated on the island before Seneca's time. The Corsican olives have at present the reputation of resisting better than all others the changes of the weather; the great Humboldt awards them this praise. They require little attention. The oldest branches are cut off to strengthen the tree, the soil about its roots is loosened, and manure is laid round the trunk. The olives are collected when they fall off. Twenty pounds of olives produce five pounds of clear oil. This is put into large jars, in which it stands till the month of May. The olive-tree yields abundantly every three years.