[Within the few last years, large numbers of pine-apples have been imported into this country from the Bahamas, where they are grown as turnips are grown in our fields. They are sold comparatively speaking at an extremely moderate price, and those that have become somewhat spoilt by the long carriage are hawked about the streets of London at a halfpenny or penny per slice. They are however vastly inferior in flavour to the pines cultivated in our hot-houses, but it is to be expected, from the considerable demand, that greater care will be bestowed on their cultivation, and the markets of London be regularly supplied with a much improved kind.]
FOOTNOTES
[248] La Historia General de las Indias. Sevilla, 1535, fol. lib. xvii. c. 13. [An earlier notice of the pine-apple had been given by Andræa Navagero in his letter to Rannusio, dated from Seville, May 12, 1526. He says, “I have also seen a most beautiful fruit, the name of which I do not recollect: I have eaten of it, for it was imported fresh. It has the taste of the quince, together with that of the peach, with some resemblance also of the melon: it is fragrant, and is truly of most delicious flavour.”—Lettere di xiii Huomini Illustri.]
[249] Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique, autrement nommée Amerique. Par André Thevet. Anvers, 1558.
[250] Voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, autrement dite Amerique. Par J. de Lery. Genève, 1580, 8vo, p. 188.
[251] Rerum Med. novæ Hispaniæ Thesaurus. Rome, 1651. fol.
[252] The accounts given by Acosta and Linschotten may be seen in Bauhini Histor. Plantarum, iii. p. 95. Kircher in his China Illustrata says, “That fruit which the Americans and people of the East Indies, among whom it is common, call the ananas, and which grows also in great abundance in the provinces of Quantung, Chiamsi, and Fokien, is supposed to have been brought from Peru to China.”
[253] See Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais sur l’Entendement Humain (Œuv. Phil.), p. 256, Amst. 1765, 4to.
[254] Lersner, Chronik, ii. p. 824.
[255] Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary, i. p. 132. Lueder, Wartung der Küchengewächse. Lubeck, 1780, 8vo, p. 248.