By Sir Joseph Banks, Bart, 



151 



The next generation will no doubt erect Hot-houses of 

 much larger dimensions than those to which we have hitherto 

 confined ourselves, such as are capable of raising trees of 

 considerable size ; they will also, instead of healing them with 

 flues such as w e use, and which waste in the walls that con- 

 ceal them, more than half of the warmth they receive from 

 the fires that heat them, use naked tubes of metal filled with 

 steam* instead of smoke. Gardeners will then be enabled to 

 admit a proper proportion of air to the trees in the season 

 of flowering ; and as we already are aware of the use of Bees 

 in our Cherry-houses to distribute the pollen where wind can- 

 not be admitted to disperse it, and of shaking the trees when 

 in full bloom, to put the pollen in motion, they will find no 

 difficulty in setting the shyest kinds of fruits. 



It does not require the gift of prophecy to foretel, that 

 ere long the Akee and the Avocado pear of the West Indies, 

 the Flat Peach, the Mandarine Orange, and the Li-tchi of 

 China, theMango,+ the Mangosteen, and the Durion of the 

 East Indies, and possibly other valuable fruits, will be fre- 

 quent at the tables of opulent persons ; and some of them 

 perhaps in less than half a century, be offered for sale on 

 every market day at Covent Garden. 



Subjoined is a list of those fruits cultivated at Rome, in 

 the time of Pliny, that are now grown in our English 

 gardens. 



* A neat and ingenious fancy for heating Melon frames by steam, appeared in 

 the Gentleman's Magazine for January 1755. 



f The Mango was ripened in the Royal Gardens at Kew in the Autumn of 

 1808, by Mr. Aiton, his Majesty's gardener, who has frequently ripened fruits 

 of the Mespilus Japonica, which is a good but not a superior fruit 

 VOL. 1. X 



