The fig and mulberry are so well known in America, that nothing need be said of them.  Their culture, too, is by women and children, and therefore earnestly to be desired in countries where there are slaves.  In these, the women and children are often employed in labors disproportioned to their sex and age.  By presenting to the master objects of culture, easier and equally beneficial, all temptation to misemploy them would be removed, and the lot of this tender part of our species be much softened.  By varying too the articles of culture, we multiply the chances for making something, and disarm the seasons, in a proportionable degree, of their calamitous effects.

The olive is a tree the least known in America, and yet the most worthy of being known.  Of all the gifts of heaven to man, it is next to the most precious, if it be not the most precious.  Perhaps it may claim a preference even to bread; because there is such an infinitude of vegetables, which it renders a proper and comfortable nourishment.  In passing the Alps at the Col de Tende, where they are mere masses of rock, wherever there happens to be a little soil, there are a number of olive trees, and a village supported by them.  Take away these trees, and the same ground, in corn, would not support a single family.  A pound of oil, which can be bought for three or four pence sterling, is equivalent to many pounds of flesh, by the quantity of vegetables it will prepare, and render fit and comfortable food.  Without this tree, the country of Provence and territory of Genoa, would not support one half, perhaps not one third, their present inhabitants.  The nature of the soil is of little consequence, if it be dry.  The trees are planted from fifteen to twenty feet apart, and when tolerably good, will yield fifteen or twenty pounds of oil yearly, one with another.  There are trees which yield much more.  They begin to render good crops at twenty years old, and last till killed by cold, which happens at some time or other, even in their best positions in France.  But they put out again from their roots.  In Italy, I am told, they have trees of two hundred years old.  They afford an easy but constant employment through the year, and require so little nourishment, that if the soil be fit for any other production, it may be cultivated among the olive trees, without injuring them.  The northern limits of this tree, are the mountains of the Cevennes, from about the meridian of Carcassonne to the Rhone, and from thence, the Alps and Apennines as far as Genoa, I know, and how much farther I am not informed.  The shelter of these mountains may be considered as equivalent to a degree and a half of latitude, at least; because westward of the commencement of the Cevennes, there are no olive trees in 43 1/2 deg. or even 43 deg. of latitude, whereas, we find them now on the Rhone at Pierrelatte, in 44 1/2 deg., and formerly they were at Tains, above the mouth of the Isere, in 45 deg., sheltered by the