“In planting suckers, I have, in several instances, left the stems and roots of the old plant remaining attached to them; and these have made a much more rapid progress than others. One strong sucker was thus planted in a large pot upon the 20th of July, (1819;) and that is (March 1820) beginning to show fruit. Its stem is thick enough to produce a very large fruit; but its leaves are short, though broad and numerous; and the gardeners who have seen it, all appear wholly at a loss to conjecture what will be the value of its produce. In other cases, in which I retained the old stems and roots, I selected small and late suckers, and these have afforded me the most perfect plants I have ever seen; and they do not exhibit any symptoms of disposition to fruit prematurely. I am, however, still ignorant whether any advantage will be ultimately obtained by this mode of treating the Queen Pine; but I believe 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 managing Pines in the manner recommended, and upon the necessary 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 attentive 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 recommend, 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 sevenpence 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 the back wall, would not exceed fourpence a day. A roof of properly curved iron bars, appears to me also to present many other advantages: it may be erected at much less cost, it is much more durable, it requires much less expense to paint it, and it admits greatly more light.” _Hort. Trans._ iv. 72.