THE PINE-APPLE. 39 



o'clock, giving them a gentle dewing overhead, filling 

 up the steaming-trays, sprinkling the surface of the 

 plunging material and about the collars or bottom 

 leaves of the plants. The temperature may then be 

 run up to from 85° to 90° for an hour or two. The 

 fires, which 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 common practice to give occasional strong water- 

 ings 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 growing season, I always put a little of it 

 into the evaporating pans once or twice a-week, and 

 find 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 remoye them. 

 When suckers or gills appear on the stems or under 

 the base . of the fruit, they should ,be removed im- 

 mediately 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 generally so hot and scorching as the suc- 

 ceeding three months ; less air is therefore needed. 

 The pineries can be shut up earlier, so that less eva- 

 poration goes on, and the swelling fruit can have a 



