2 40 Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



is grown for decorative use. The name of the fruit was 

 most naturally suggested by the resemblance it bears in 

 figure, dimensions, and sculpture, to the cone of the 

 Pinus Pinea, before the scales have begun to fall asunder. 

 It had already been given to different kinds of pine and 

 fir-cones, as in the old verse : 



" Stormes rifest rende 

 The sturdy, stout pine-apple tre." 



The first instance of the current application seems to 

 be in Parkinson's Theatrum Botanicum, 1640, p. 1626. 

 Previously it was known as the " ananas," a Portuguese 

 modification of the Brazilian or Peruvian " nana." It was 

 from Brazil that the fruit was first brought to Europe, the 

 native countries being tropical South America, Mexico, 

 and the West Indies. Oviedo was the first to describe 

 it, in 1535. After him, we find it mentioned in every 

 successive writer upon the vegetable productions of South 

 America. Holland possessed it long before England, 

 apparently about the middle of the seventeenth century. 

 Accounts differ as to the time of the exact appearance 

 in our own country, but it was probably some fifty or 

 sixty years afterwards. In 1716 Lady Mary Wortley 

 Montagu, dining at a great house in Hanover, saw, she 

 tells us, what she had never even heard of before, a 

 pine-apple for the first time. 



Long since carried to Asia, in some parts of India the 

 pine-apple has become widely naturalized, and presents 

 all the appearance of an indigenous plant. Happy only 

 where the temperature is very high, almost equatorial, 



