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XLVIII. On the Cultivation of the Pine Apple. By 

 Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq. F. R. S. 8?c. President. 



Read August 19, 1828. 



I have now completed a long course of experiments upon 

 the culture of the Pine Apple in the Dry Stove, the object of 

 which has been to ascertain the means by which that species 

 of fruit might be most advantageously grown, and particu- 

 larly at those periods of the year, when the scarcity of other 

 fruits gives it an additional value. In these experiments I have 

 endeavoured to ascertain the effects of excess of drought, and 

 of moisture ; and of very high, and of very low, temperature. 

 I have of course, sacrificed manyplants in experiments, which 

 I neither found, nor expected to find, successful ; but from 

 these I have derived information, which I believe will prove 

 useful to the cultivators, and advantageous to the consumers, 

 of that species of fruit.* 



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this Volume) shewn that the mould in pots circumstanced as those which contain 

 my Pine Apple plants are, acquires a temperature very nearly equal to that of the 

 aggregate temperature of the air in the house, but not subject to such extensive 

 variations. Thus, if the highest temperature of the air within the house during 

 the day be 90° and the lowest during the night be 70°, the temperature of ihe mould 

 in the pots will nearly approximate the arithmetical mean 80° : and surely the 

 intelligent gardeners of the present day must be fully sensible that mould at 

 eighty degrees is warm enough without the aid of the irregular and ungovernable 

 heat of a bark bed, whatever their ignorant predecessors, who first introduced 

 the bark bed into the Pine stove, may have thought. 



