At the royal gardens, and those of Prince Leopold, at Portici, near Naples, a few Pines are grown in pits, by two German gardeners, that of Prince Leopold, an intelligent man and a good botanist; but the plants, notwithstanding the fine climate, are etiolated, slender, and pale, with very small fruit. The pits were entirely sunk in the ground, narrow, and without flues, and they were shaded in the day-time with a net. It appeared to us, that they were much too tenderly treated; if uncovered in the night-time, or planted in the open garden, and left exposed all the summer, and covered with double glass frames during winter, without any fire heat; but, if occasion required, surrounded by linings of dung, we have no doubt they would succeed much better. At Caserta, a royal palace about eighteen miles from Naples, the Pine Apple is grown in a style much superior. The gardens and grounds there, were laid out by M. Græffer, a German gardener, who was formerly a partner in the firm of Gordon, Thomson, & Co. London nurserymen. The hot-houses are built exactly in the English style; the Pines raised and forwarded in pits, and fruited in broad low houses, with vines trained under the rafters, in Speechly’s manner. M. Græffer died in 1816, and his son has still the care of the royal gardens, and in 1819 had the Pines, in what would be considered in this country, middling good order. They were certainly of a much less vivid green than those of England or Holland, and the fruit was smaller; M. Græffer, jun. never having been out of Italy, was not aware of the difference; but on enquiring into his mode of treatment, we were led to suspect a deficiency of water and of moisture, by watering the flues and paths of the house, and too great a heat kept up during the night. The air of Italy is, at most periods of the year, much drier than that of the north of Europe; that of France and Germany is also drier than the air of Holland, Britain, and Russia; and perhaps this difference in atmospheric moisture, and the overheating at night, may, in some measure, account for the difference in the colour of the foliage of the Pine and other plants kept under glass in France and Italy.