“With regard to the bottom heat for the Pine-plants, by steam from the same boiler, I find, by allowing the steam to remain in the chamber below the plants about two hours a day, the pit is kept constantly at the temperature of from ninety to ninety-five degrees, which I have found to be as high as the roots of the plants are able to bear. I would, therefore, say ninety degrees to be the standard height, which I have myself adopted, allowing it to fluctuate down. If our succession Pine-pit had been altered to have been heated by steam, as the fruiting one is, which the boiler is perfectly able to do, the saving in tan alone would more than pay the interest of all the money laid out on erecting the whole steam apparatus. “The above is my candid opinion on the subject, as far as my practice has enabled me to speak. I am, &c. “JAMES DODDS.” * * * * * The best stoves for combining the culture of the Pine and Vine in Scotland, have been constructed by Mr. Hay, of which fine examples occur at Lord Duncan’s, Lundie-house, near Dundee, and the Earl of Roseberry’s, at Dulmeny-park (_fig. 23._), near Edinburgh. [Illustration: 23] As substitutes for tan, leaves are the common resource, but any vegetable matter of slow putrefaction may be employed, as chopped spray of hedges or copse, wood-shavings, saw-dust, &c. and in Scotland, it has been found that flax-dressers’ refuse keeps up a moderate heat for a longer period than any other material. The mode of employing the vigour remaining in the old stock or plant after the fruit is cut, to nourish, for a certain time, the sucker or suckers which may be growing on it, was practised by Speechly; but scarcely to the extent which it has been carried lately. This, we think, a considerable improvement, if kept within certain limits; but, if carried too far, what might be gained by the sucker coming earlier into fruit, would be lost by the retardation of the plant’s own suckers. On Nov. 3. 1818. “A Queen Pine, grown by Peter Marsland, Esq. of Woodbank, near Stockport, was exhibited to the Horticultural Society. It weighed three pounds fourteen ounces, measured seventeen inches in circumference, and was peculiarly well-flavoured. The singularity of this Pine was its being the produce of a sucker which had been removed from the parent-root only six months previous to the time the fruit was cut. The plant on which the sucker grew had produced a fruit, which was cut in October, 1817; the old stem, with the sucker attached, was allowed to remain in the Pine-pit till May, 1818; at that time the sucker was broken off, potted, and plunged into a fresh pit; it soon after showed fruit, which, in the course of four months, attained to the weight and size above stated. Mr. Marsland is in the practice of producing Pines in this way with equal success and expedition. His houses are all heated by steam.” _Hort. Trans._ iv. 52.