been contrived for the purpose of securing a late crop, which may have been managed by destroying the first set of bloom, and encouraging the vines to produce a second. The last line of the epigram, which states the office of the house to be that of compelling the winter to produce autumnal fruits, leads much to this opinion.

- Hot-houses seem to have been little used in England, if at all, in the beginning of the last century. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, on her journey to Constantinople, in the year 1716, remarks the circumstance of pine-apples being served up in the desert, at the Electoral table at Hanover, as a thing she had never before seen or heard of; (see her Letters.) Had pines been then grown in England, her ladyship, who moved in the highest circles, could not have been ignorant of the fact. The public have still much to learn on the subject of hot houses, of course the Horticultural Society have much to teach.

They have hitherto been too frequently misapplied under the name of forcing-houses, to the vain and ostentatious purpose of hurrying fruits to maturity, at a season of the year, when the sun has not the power of endowing them with their natural flavour; we have begun however to apply them to their proper use, we have peach-houses built for the purpose of presenting that excellent fruit to the sun, when his genial influence is the most active. We have others for the purpose of ripening grapes, in which they are secured from the chilling effects of our uncertain autumns, and we have brought them to as high a degree of perfection here, as either Spain, France, or Italy can boast of. We have pine-houses also, in which that delicate fruit is raised in a better style than is generally practised in its native intertropical countries; except, perhaps, in the well managed gardens of rich individuals, who may, if due care and attention is used by their gardeners, have pines as good, but cannot have them better, than those we know how to grow in England.

The next generation will no doubt erect hot-houses of much larger dimensions than those, to which we have hitherto confined ourselves, such as are capable of raising trees of considerable size; they will also, instead of heating them with flues, such as we use, and which waste in the walls that conceal them

more than half of the warmth they receive from the fires that heat them, use naked tubes of metal filled with steam* instead of smoke. Gardeners will then be enabled to admit a proper proportion of air to the trees in the season of flowering, and as we already are aware of the use of bees in our cherry-houses to distribute the pollen, where wind cannot be admitted to disperse it, and of shaking the trees when in full bloom, to put the pollen in motion, they will find no difficulty in setting the shyest kinds of fruits.

It does not require the gift of prophecy to foretell, that ere long the aki and the avocado pear of the West Indies, the flat peach, the mandarine orange, and the litchi of China, the mango,t the mangostan, and the durion of the East Indies, and possibly other valuable fruits, will be frequent at the tables of opulent persons; and some of them, perhaps in less than half a century, be offered for sale on every market day at Covent Garden. Subjoined is a list of those fruits cultivated at Rome, in the time of Pliny, that are now grown in our English gardens. Almonds. Both sweet and bitter were abundant. Apples.-22 sorts at least: sweet apples (melimala) for eating, and others for cookery. They had one sort without kernels.

Apricots.-Pliny says of the apricot (armeniaca) que sola et odore commendantur, (lib. xv, sect. 11.) He arranges them among his plums. Martial valued them little, as appears by his epigram, xiii, 46.

Cherries were introduced into Rome in the year of the city 680, A. C. 73, and were carried thence to Britain 120 years after, A. D. 48. The Romans had eight kinds, a red one, a black one, a kind so tender as scarce to bear any carriage, a hard fleshed one (duracina) like our bigarreau, a small one with a bitterish flavour (laurea) like our little wild black, also a dwarf one, not exceeding three feet high.

A neat and ingenious fancy for heating melon frames by steam, appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1755.

†The mango was ripened by Mr. Aiton, his Majesty's gardener, in the Royal Gardens at Kew, in the autumn of 1808, who has frequently ripened fruits of the mespilus japonica, which is a good but not a superior fruit.

Chesnuts. They had six sorts, some more easily separated from the skin than others, and one with a red skin; they roasted them as we do.

Figs. They had many sorts, black and white, large and small, one as large as a pear, another no larger than an olive.

Medlars. They had two kinds, the one larger, and the other smaller.

Mulberries. They had two kinds of the black sort, a larger and a smaller. Pliny speaks also of a mulberry growing on a brier: Nascuntur et in rubis, (1. xv, sect. 27,) but whether this means the raspberry, or the common blackberry does not appear.

Nuts. They had hazle-nuts and filberds; has quoque mollis protegit barba (1. 15, sect. 24:) they roasted these nuts.

Pears. Of these they had many sorts, both summer and winter fruit, melting and hard; they had more than thirty-six kinds, some were called libralia: we have our pound pear.

Plums. They had a multiplicity of sorts (ingens turba prunorum) black, white, and variegated, one sort was called asinina, from its cheapness, another damascena, this had much stone and little flesh: from Martial's Epigram, xiii, 29, we may conclude, that it was what we now call prunes.

Quinces. They had three sorts, one was called chrysomela from its yellow flesh; they boiled them with honey, as we make marmalade. See Martial, xiii, 24.

Services. They had the apple-shaped, the pear-shaped, and a small kind, probably the same as we gather wild, possibly the azarole.

Strawberries-they had, but do not appear to have prized; the climate is too warm to produce this fruit in perfection unless in the hills.

Vines. They had a multiplicity of these, both thick skinned (duracina) and thin skinned: one vine growing at Rome produced 12 amphora of juice, 84 gallons. They had round berried, and long berried sorts, one so long, that it was called dactylides, the grapes being like the fingers on the hand. Martial speaks favourably of the hard skinned grape for eating, xiii, 22.

Walnuts. They had soft shelled, and hard shelled, as we have: in the golden age, when men lived upon acorns, the gods lived upon walnuts, hence the name juglans, Jovis glans.

MR. OLDSCHOOL,

As it is not, I believe, generally known that a colony of Greeks are settled in North America, I transcribe for your use, the following extract from Stoddard's Sketches of Louisiana, and hope that it may induce some of your correspondents in that quarter, to give an account of the present situation of those unfortunate people.

S.

As the Floridas have often changed masters, some variety in the popula-tion may be expected. The Spaniards were the first to make permanent settlements in them. The peace of 1763, put them in possession of Great Britain, when a number of English, Scotch, and Irish, were incorporated with the ancient inhabitants. They also received an accessation during the American revolution, when many of those disaffected to our cause obtained refuge in the Floridas; and the proximity of our settlements has prompted many of our citizens since that period to become Spanish subjects.

One remarkable fact relative to the population of the Floridas must not escape notice. While these were in possession of the English, a plan was concerted to entice a colony of Greeks into the country. Sir William Duncan and doctor Turnbull were at the bottom of this transaction. The country was represented to the Greeks in the most favourable light; they were promised fertile fields and lands in abundance, and also transportation and subsistence. Hence fifteen hundred souls were deluded from the islands in Greece and Italy, and landed in East Florida. They were planted at a place called New Symrna, situated about seventy miles to the southward of St. Augustine. But what was their surprise when, instead of cultivated fields, they were ushered into a desolate wilderness, without the means of support! What mortified them still more was, that some of them were tantalized with the use of rented lands for ten years, at the expiration of which they reverted again to their original proprietors, when the poor settlers were once more reduced to poverty and misery. Some of them indeed could not obtain land on any terms. Hence they were obliged to labour for the planters in the character of slaves, and to experience hunger and nakedness. Overseers were placed over them, and whenever the usual task was not completed, they were goaded with the lash. Families were not allowed to live separate from each other; but a number of them were crowded together in one mess, and condemned to promiscuous repose. The poor wretches were not even allowed to procure fish for themselves, although the sea at their feet was full of them. People were forbidden to furnish them with victuals; severe punishments were decreed against those who gave, and those who received the charitable boon. Under this treatment many of them died, especially the old people. At length in 1769, seized with despair and sensible of no other al

ternative than escape or death, they rose on their cruel tyrants, and made themselves masters of some small vessels. But their designs were frustrated by the prompt exertions of the military; and this revolt closed with the deaths of five of the unhappy ringleaders.

This transaction is so contrary to the reputed humanity of the English nation that it requires some credulity to believe the solemn report of a British officer who was an eye witness to what we have related.

THEATRICAL-FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

MR. OLDSCHOOL,

Believing that you are disposed to do justice to rising merit in any walk of life, I take the liberty of expressing the pleasure I enjoyed some evenings since, on witnessing the performance of a young actor whom I have never yet seen noticed in print. I allude to Mr. Harris of the new theatre. I happened to be present at the representation of Mrs. Inchbald's comedy of "Such things are," the scene of which is in India; where a benevolent Englishman (Mr. Howard) is introduced as visiting the prisons, in hopes of relieving the distresses of those who are confined. As the keeper is conducting him through a dark passage among different dungeons, one of the prisoners steals his pocket book containing a large sum, which he finds is sufficent to ransom him and restore him to his family. When Howard returns from his round he meets this man, interrogates him on his situation, and, being touched by his distress, offers him money and promises to intercede for his release. He is then retiring, when the prisoner, struck with the generosity of the stranger, and unable to contain his feelings, restores him his pocket book, and confesses his theft. All this occupies but very little time and the prisoner is quite a subordinate personage. But Mr. Harris seized so true a conception of the character, and performed it with so perfect and touching a simplicity, that I confess, without disparaging the rest of the company, who really all performed well, the prisoner was to me the most interesting character in the play. I mention this circumstance, not merely as a matter