THE PINE APPLE. 165 



so than the Fig and Orange tree : possibly, having 

 been formed by nature for inter-tropical climates, 

 its powers of life may become fatigued, and ex- 

 hausted by the length of a bright English summer's 

 day in high temperature. Being a plant of low 

 stature, nature has also probably given it the power 

 to ripen its fruit and seed, in the shade of other 

 plants, in its native climate j and I discovered in 

 the last summer, that it possesses the power to ripen 

 its fruit perfectly in a lower temperature than I 

 previously thought it capable of growing in. 



" In the month of June, I gave a couple of Pine 

 plants, which had shown fruit at six months old, 

 and were of small size, and no value, to a child of 

 one of my friends, to be placed in a conservatory, 

 in which no fires were kept during the summer. 

 In July, a storm of hail destroyed nearly, or fully, 

 half the glass of the conservatory ; and its temper- 

 ature, through the summer and autumn, had been 

 so low, that the Chasselas grapes in it were not ripe 

 in the second week in September. In the second 

 week of the present month (October) one of the 

 Pine Apples became ripe, having previously swollen 

 to a most extraordinary size, comparatively with the 

 size of the plant ; and upon measuring accurately 

 the comparative width of the fruit, and of the stem, 

 I found the width of the fruit to exceed that of the 

 stem in the proportion of seven and three-quarters 

 to one. The fruit had, of course, been propped 

 during all, the latter part of the summer, the stem 



M 3 



