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Round olives will retain their black colour if they are packed in salt for five days, and then, the salt having been brushed away, are exposed for two days in the sun: or they may be preserved in must boiled down to one-third, without the use of salt. Of storing amurca LXI. Experienced farmers do well to save their amurca as they do their oil and their wine.

The yield of the olive is of two kinds, oil which is well known and amurca, of the use of which many are so ignorant that one can often see it streaming from the mill and wasting upon the ground where it not only discolours the soil, but in places where it collects even makes it sterile: while if applied intelligently it has many uses of the greatest importance to agriculture, as, for instance, by pouring it around the roots of trees, chiefly the olive itself, or wherever it is desired to destroy weeds.

Some men even sprinkle their grain with amurca in the proportion of a quadrantal to every thousand modii of grain: others crumble or scatter over it, for the same purpose, other vermifuges like Chalcidian or Carian chalk or wormwood, and other things of that kind.

The method of preserving it is this: immediately after the oil has been pressed out, draw off the amurca and boil it down to one-third and, when it has cooled, store it in vats. There are other methods also, as that in which must is mingled with the amurca.

The corn which, during the harvest time, you stored in the ear and which you contemplate using for food, should be brought out during the winter to be crushed and ground in the grist mill. Of condensing amurca LXIV. When it flows from the oil mill, amurca is a watery fluid full of dregs.

It is the practice to anoint the threshing floor with amurca, for that is an enemy of grass and a poison to ants and to moles. Some build up and even pave their threshing floor with rock to make it permanent, and some, like the people of Bagiennae, even roof it over because in that country storms are prevalent at the threshing season.

The walls and the floors should be plastered with a stucco of marble dust or at least with a mixture of clay and chaff and amurca, for amurca will serve to keep out mice and weevil and will make the grain solid and heavy.