FRUIT UNDER GLASS. 167 
Sovereign, and Leader are best for later. I am fond of President 
too. After the strawberries are forced put them in some cold 
frame, and later on plant out; they will throw a very large crop 
the following year, then clear them out. 
A word as to packing :—Line the box with wood-wool and 
cotton-wool, put strawberry-leaf or lime-tree-leaf round each fruit, 
place them husk-end down in a single layer in the box, and pack 
close enough to prevent shaking. I prefer wood-boxes to tin- 
boxes. 
THE PINE-APPLE, 
The first consideration for the cultivation of pine-apples is the 
house or structure for growing them in with least trouble and 
expense. I have seen during the past thirty years a good many 
different ways and structures for growing pine-apples throughout 
the United Kingdom, but have not seen one so good in every 
way as the pinery at Dalkeith. It may be described as a low 
three-quarter span-roof house seven feet high at the apex or span, 
and just wide enough for a bed to hold three lines of pine-apple 
plants in fruiting-pots, and a path two and a half feet wide 
running at the bottom of the back wall. The bed in which the 
pine-pots are plunged has a bottom-heat chamber underneath 
heated with hot-water pipes. The floor of the bed over the 
heated chamber consists of thickish stone flags. The reason for 
using such flags is that they retain heat better than a thinner 
material would do, and fluctuations in heating from the pipes 
underneath being too cold or too hot are not so readily felt, and 
therefore a steady bottom-heat is kept to the pines—a matter of 
great importance. Tan bark is used in the bed for plunging, 
and this house has always a very neat and clean appearance 
inside, a great contrast to the insides of pineries where dung and 
leaves are used or where the planting-out system is adopted. In 
- some large gardens span-roofed houses are used for Meee 
but they require much more heating, and that is a gis 
great importance in our long, cold, sunless winters, and i t . 
pines get drawn in span-houses. The nearer the pines are to the 
roof the better. Stubby, thick-necked pine-plants alone produce 
good fruit. 
