3 



tion that it might he cultivated as a dessert fruit. 

 (Hortus Kew.) 



Yet the fruit of the pine apple had been made 

 known in England in 1657 ; for an embassage return- 

 ing to this country from China, in that year, appears 

 to have brought pine apples thence as a present to 

 Oliver Cromwell. John NieuhofF, who was secretary 

 to the embassy, describes the fruit very correctly ; 

 and Evelyn, in his " Diary," under the date of 9th 

 August, 1661, says, "I first saw the famous Queen 

 pine brought from Barbadoes, and presented to his 

 Majesty (Charles II.) ; but the first that were ever 

 seen in England were those sent to Cromwell four 

 years since. "* 



It may be that from the crowns of this, and of 

 others mentioned by Evelyn as sent to the king from 

 the West Indies, in 1668, that Mr. John Rose, his 

 Majesty's gardener, succeeded in raising a fruit of 

 the pine apple in this country. We say it may be, 

 because there is a portrait, in oil colours, of Rose, at 

 Kensington Palace, representing him giving a pine 

 apple to Charles II. Rose was then gardener to the 

 Duchess of Cleveland, and the garden in which the 

 present is being made was that at her Grace's seat, 

 Downey Court, Buckinghamshire. f We do not know 



* Evelyn makes no mention of the pine apple even in the 3rd 

 edition of his " French Gardener/ ' published in 1672. 



f There is a copy of this in water colours in the Library of 

 the London Horticultural Society. 



