22 FOREIGN MODES OF CULTIVATING 



many; but in the year 1814, there were very few 

 in th empire. 



SECT. III. 



Culture of the Pine Apple in Russia. 



THE Pine Apple is extensively cultivated in the 

 imperial gardens in the neighbourhood of Peters- 

 burg and Moscow, and also in those of a few of the 

 greatest nobility and mercantile men adjoining 

 those cities. Nothing can be more wonderful 

 than to contemplate the resources by which this 

 plant, requiring not less than from 50 to 70 degrees 

 of heat at all times of the year, is preserved in ex- 

 istence through a winter of seven months, during the 

 whole of which the ground is covered with snow, 

 and Fahrenheit's thermometer, often for weeks to- 

 gether, at 20 below Zero. 



The head gardeners of the emperor, and the 

 great nobles of Russia, are, for the greater part, 

 Britons ; and the sort of houses they erect, and the 

 mode of culture they follow, is as nearly as circum- 

 stances will admit, those of Speechly or Nicol. 



The culture of the grape is, to a certain extent, 

 combined with that of the Pine Apple ; the former 

 is trained on the rafters, and the latter grown in 

 a pit, surrounded by flues and a path. In ad- 

 dition to the flues, many of the fruiting-houses 

 have stoves built in them, on the German con- 



