ANTIQUITIES. 



669 



them with their natural flavour : 

 we have begun, however, to apply 

 them to their proper use ; vve have 

 peach-houses built for the purpose 

 of representing that excellent fruit 

 to the sun, when his genial influ- 

 ence is the most active. We have 

 others for the purpose of ripening 

 grapes, in which they are secured 

 from the chilling effects of our 

 uncertain autumns ; and we have 

 brought them to as high a degree 

 of perfection here as either Spain, 

 France, of Italy can boast of. We 

 have pine-houses also, in which that 

 delicate fruit is raised in a better 

 style than is generally practised in 

 its native intertropical countries ; 

 except, perhaps, in the well-ma- 

 naged gardens of rich individuals, 

 who may, if due care and atten- 

 tion is used by their gardeners, 

 have pines as good, but cannot 

 have them better, than those we 

 know how to grow in England. 



The next generation will no 

 doubt erect hot-houses of much 

 larger dimensions than those to 

 which we have hitherto confined 

 ourselves, such as are capable of 

 raising trees of considerable size : 

 I they will also, instead of heating 

 them with flues, such as vve use, 

 and which waste in the walls that 

 conceal them more than half of 

 the warmth they receive from the 

 fires that heat them, use naked 

 tubes of metal filled with steam 

 instead of smoke. Gardeners will 

 then be enabled to admit a proper 

 proportion of air to tlie trees in 

 the season of flowering; and as 

 we already are aware of the use 

 of bees in our cherry-houses to 

 distribute the pollen where wind 

 cannot be admitted to disperse it, 

 and of shaking the trees when in 



full bloom, to put the polleri in 

 motion, they will find no diffi- 

 culty in setting the shyest kinds of 

 fruits. 



It does not require the gift of 

 prophecy to foretell, that ere long 

 the aki, and the avocado pear of 

 the West Indies, the flat peach, 

 the mandarine orange, and the 

 lichi of China, the mango, the 

 mangostan, and the durion of the 

 East Indies, and possibly other 

 valuable fruits, will be frequent at 

 the tables of opulent persons ; 

 and some of them, perhaps in less 

 than half a century, be offered for 

 sale on every market day at Co- 

 vent Garden. 



Subjoined is a list of those fruits 

 cultivated at Rome, in the time 

 of Pliny, that are now grown in 

 our English gardens. 



Almonds, both sweet and bitter, 

 were abundant. 



Apples 22 sorts at least ; sweet 

 apples (melimala for eating, and 

 others for cookery. They had 

 one sort without kernels. 



Apricots. Pliny says of the apri- 

 cot (Armeniaca) quae sola et 

 odore commendantur, lib. xv. 

 sect 11. He arranges them 

 among his plums. Martial va- 

 lued them little as appears by 

 his epigram, xiii. 46. 



Cherries were introduced into 

 Rome in the year of the city 

 680, 73 A. C. and were carried 

 thence to Britain 120 years 

 after, A. D, 48. The Romans 

 had eight kinds, a red one, a 

 black one, a kind so tender as 

 scarce to bear any carriage, a 

 hard-fleshed one (duracina) like 

 our bigarreau, a small one with 

 a bitterish flavour (laurea) like 



