502 THE PRACTICAL GARDENER. 



10. SouTUOATE. — A well known cucumber round London; fruit long; fine 

 green color ; eats crisp ; and is a good bearer. 



11. Moir's Ccccmber. — Long successfully cultivated by the late Moir, of the 

 King's Road. An excellent bearer, and esteenicd fruit. 



PINES. 



Pine Apple, Bromelia Ananas, /.in«/rf«,— belongs to the class and order llex- 

 andria Monogynia, and natural order liromcUa. Is considered a native of South 

 America, although it is found indigenous in several parts of Africa in great abund- 

 ance. Gonfalo Hernandez de Oviedo is the first person to whom we are indebted 

 for any account of the Pine. He was born in 1178, at Madrid; and in 1513, departed 

 for America, \N here he was appointed governor of St. Domingo. In that year he 

 printed his "Universal History of India," which was printed at Seville, and in 

 which he makes mention of three kinds of pine-apples which were known in 

 America under the names of Ytnjama, liotiiania, and Yai/ngtta, but which were 

 designated by the Spaniards under the general appellation o( Tinas. At this period, 

 frecjucnt attempts were made to send the fruit in an unripe state to Spain, but they 

 always became rotten during the voyage; afterwards it was attempted to transport 

 the tops or crowns to Spain, but these also were destroyed during the passage. 



In the voar 1541, Gerommo Benzono, an Italian, repaired to Mexico, where he 

 resided until 1555, and on his return he wrote the History of the New Worid, 

 which was printed in Venice in 15G8. In this work he passes a high eulogium on 

 the pine, and declares it to be the " finest fruit on this good earth of God." 



Andre Thcvet, a Franciscan Monk, who resided in Brazil in 1555-56, has 

 transmitted us a description of the Ananas utider the name o( yanas. At that time 

 the art of preserving them in sugar was well known. 



In 1557, Jean de Lcry, who went out as a priest to a colony of Huguenots in 

 Brazil, makes freciucnt mention of the .Ananas, and in the inflated style of those 

 early times, he describes that to be the fruit on which the gods luxuriate, and which 

 ought only to be cut by the hand of a Venus. 



In the IGth century, Franc. Hernandez, who undertook a most expensive journey 

 to Mexico at the charge of Fliilip II., at the same time that Acosta was hi 

 America, has furnished us with some good drawings of the Ananas, to which, how- 

 ever, he gives the name of Matzolli, or Tinea Indica. 



Linnaeus gives New Spain and Surinam as the native habitat of the pine ; and 

 Acosta says, that it was first sent from Santa Cruz, in Brazil, into the West, and after- 

 wards into the East Indies. It was introduced into Europe from the West Indies 

 by Le Cour, of Leyden, about the middle of the seventeenth century. From 

 Lcyden it came into England, and is said to have been first cultivated here by Sir M. 

 Decker, of Richmond; and next, by John Blackburn, Esq., in Lancashire. Accord- 

 ing to the Ilorius Kcwensis, it was introduced here as a botanical plant as early as 

 1690 by Bentick. It was introduced into Scotland before 1732, as Justice gi res a 

 plan of a stove erected by himself, in which the pine fruited for the first time in that 

 country, in his garden, near Edinburgh. It is now so generally cultivated, that few 



