THE PINE-APPLE. 39 



wliicli should now be low through the day, should be 

 quickened in time to keep the heat from falling below 

 the proper night temperature at 10 P.M. 



Under this treatment the fruit will swell rapidly, and 

 careful attention must be paid to watering. The great 

 thing to be aimed at being to keep the soil in a healthy 

 growth-giving state — moist, but not wet. It is a com- 

 mon practice to give occasional strong waterings with 

 guano, sheep, or deers' dung. Instead of this, I prefer, 

 as already directed for succession plants, to water every 

 time with a weaker solution of these manures, and I 

 prefer guano to any other ; and during the rapid grow- 

 ing season, I always put a little of it into the evaporat- 

 ing pans once or twice a-week, and iind it gives that 

 fine dark-green hue and thickness of texture so desirable 

 to see in pines. They should be gone over as soon as 

 the suckers appear, and where there are more than two to 

 a plant remove them. "When suckers or gills appear on 

 the stems or under the base of the fruit, they should be 

 removed immediately they are discovered. 



The month of May generally brings comparatively 

 warm sunny weather, and vegetation gets into full play ; 

 and I am not sure but what May is the very best month 

 in the whole year for swelling off pines. It is not gene- 

 rally so hot and scorching as the succeeding three 

 months ; less air is therefore needed. The pineries can 

 be shut up earlier, so that less evaporation goes on, and 

 the swelling fruit, can have a longer period of sun-heat 

 and moisture in the afternoon than when the sun is 

 more powerful, and when it is not safe to damp and shut 

 up before four o'clock. Advantage should therefore be 

 taken of these circumstances, and the fruit pushed on, 

 when it is an object to get them ripe as soon as possible. 



