delicate, appetizing flavor. When so many favorable conditions are
needed as to growth, maturity, and soundness of the fruit, coupled
with great attention during the process of oil-making, it is not to be
wondered at that by no means all or even the greater part of the oil
produced in the most favored districts of Tuscany is of the highest
quality. On the contrary, the bulk is inferior and defective.

These defective oils are largely dealt in both for home consumption
and export, when price and not quality is the object.

In foreign countries there is always a market for inferior, defective
olive oil for cooking purposes, etc., provided the price be low. Price
and not quality is the object, so much so that when olive oil is dear,
cotton-seed, ground-nut, and other oils are substituted, which bear
the same relation to good olive oil that butterine and similar
preparations do to real butter.

The very choicest qualities of pure olive oil are largely shipped from
Leghorn to England, along with the very lowest qualities, often also
adulterated.

The oil put into Florence flasks is of the latter kind. Many years
back this was not the case, but now it is a recognized fact that
nothing but the lowest quality of oil is put into these flasks; oil
utterly unfit for food, and so bad that it is a mystery to what use it
is applied in England. Importers in England of oil in these flasks
care nothing, however, about quality; cheapness is the only
desideratum.

The best quality of Tuscan olive oil is imported in London in casks,