548 On the Cultivation of the Pine Apple. 



enter, or escape, except by apertures immediately under the 

 copings of the front and back wall, which can be efficiently 

 closed at any time. It is, consequently, an instrument, of 

 very great power, and requiring, of course, much attention 

 to ventilation : of which I had rather a lamentable proof in 

 the last spring, when my plants were all burned, and spoiled 

 in a few hours ; the person who had the care of them having 

 left them in a bright day closely shut up. The fault was not, 

 however, in any degree in the house, for the plants were, 

 previously, much the strongest, and the best I ever saw ; and 

 I believe, they would have afforded most beautiful fruit. I 

 furnished the house again with plants as expeditiously as I 

 could, chiefly in July ; and I have since kept the temperature 

 of it nearly between 70° and 95°, with a wish to make the 

 plants shew fruit and blossom in the present month (October). 

 In this, I have in part succeeded, though many of my plants 

 have flowered a fortnight or three weeks sooner than I wished. 

 The fruit is swelling well, and, I believe, will receive sufficient 

 light through the winter to enable it to ripen in much perfec- 

 tion. The excellence of a few Pine Apples, which ripened in 

 this house in the last winter, leads me almost to doubt whe- 

 ther the fruit in it will not ripen better, early in the spring, 

 than in the middle of the summer, for I have observed that 

 this species of plant, though extremely patient of high tem- 

 perature, is not, by any means, so patient of the action of 

 very continued bright light, as many other plants : and much 

 less so than the Fig and Orange tree : possibly, having been 

 formed by nature for inter-tropical climates, its powers of 

 life may become fatigued, and exhausted by the length of a 



