By Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq, 77 



and late suckers, and these have afforded me the most per- 

 fect plants I have ever seen ; and they do not exhibit any 

 symptoms of disposition to fruit prematurely. I am, how- 

 ever, still ignorant whether any advantage will be ultimately 

 obtained by this mode of treating the Queen Pine : but I be- 

 lieve it will be found applicable with much advantage in the 

 culture of those varieties of the Pine, which do not usually 

 bear fruit till the plants are three or four years old. 



I shall now offer a few remarks upon the facility of manag- 

 ing Pines in the manner recommended, and upon the neces- 

 sary amount of the expense. My gardener is an extremely 

 simple labourer, he does not know a letter or a figure ; and 

 he never saw a Pine plant growing, till he saw those of which 

 he has the care. If I were absent, he would not know at 

 what period of maturity to cut the fruit ; but in every other 

 respect he knows how to manage the plants, as well as I do ; 

 and I could teach any other moderately intelligent and at- 

 tentive labourer, in one month, to manage them just as well 

 as he can : in short, I do not think the skill necessary to 

 raise a Pine Apple, according to the mode of culture I re- 

 commend, is as great as that requisite to raise a forced crop 

 of Potatoes. The expense of fuel for my hot-house, which is 

 forty feet long, by twelve wide, is rather less than seven-pence 

 a day here, where I am twelve miles distant from coal-pits : 

 and if I possessed the advantages of a curved iron roof, such 

 as those erected by Mr. Loudon, at Bayswater, which would 

 prevent the too rapid escape of heated air in cold weather, I 

 entertain no doubt, that the expense of heating a house forty- 

 five feet long and ten wide, and capable of holding eighty 

 fruiting Pine plants, exclusive of Grapes or other fruits upon 



