297 



but he omits to say, when and where it was 

 first fruited. I conclude it must have been 

 very rare, even had it in any instance pro- 

 duced fruit, before the year 1716; as Lady 

 Mary Montague, on her journey to Constan- 

 tinople in that year, remarks the circum- 

 stance of pine-apples being served up in the 

 dessert, at the electoral table at Hanover, as 

 a thing she had never before seen or heard 

 of; and from her ladyship's rank, we may 

 conclude that she would naturally have met 

 with them at the English tables, had they 

 not been very uncommon. 



This fruit must have been known in 

 England long before it was attempted to be 

 grown here, as Lord Bacon mentions it in his 

 Essay on Plantations or Colonies, which was 

 published near a century before the intro- 

 duction of the ananas plant by the Earl 

 of Portland; but I am strongly persuaded 

 that the pine-apple had been cultivated in 

 this country at a much earlier period than 

 that mentioned by Sloane ; and this opinion 

 has been strengthened by a curious old pic- 

 ture, which the Earl of Waldegrave obli- 

 gingly showed me, in the breakfast-room of 

 his beautiful residence of Strawberry Hall, 

 Twickenham. The painting represents King 

 Charles the Second in a garden before his 



