From whatever source the Chinese derived their agriculture, internal evience seems to point to the conclusion that it is not aboriginal. Steadily pursuing the same course, age after age, the sou copying in their minotest particulars the traditions of his father, there is little reason to believe that any indigenous product has improved under the hands of the Chinese agriculturist, within the past three thousand veal In fact, most of the products of the und seem rather to have degenorated in quality, if not in size. Where else, for instance, could so utterly tasteless a vegetable be discovered as the Chinese turnip; where 'a fruit with so little flavour as the Chinese pear? Yet strangely enough the Chinese peasant, though so slow to improve in the process of cultivation, seems, by one of those contradictions so common to the race, to be ready enough to introduce a new: crop. While no amount of inducement would suffice to make him vary, in the slightest degree, the method of raising his rice or his beans, he has, within comparatively modern times, introduced the caltivation of the maize, the tobacco, the potate and the opium poppy. Round about the settlement, the vegetables of the West seem to be making their way; Jerusalem artichokes for instance, said to have been introduced into Shanghai since the foundation of the settlement, are now a sufficiently common crop, while there is little doubt that the cultivation of rice about Shanghai is otherwise being more or less trenched upon. But though thus ready to adopt new staples, the Chinaman fails in bringing them to the perfection which, with his fertile soil and his command of labour, he readily might. How rapidly Enropean vegetables degenerate under Chinese hands, we all of us have experience; yet the same result is by no means invariable in foreign gardens, where the native agriculturist is looked after. The proverbial gigantic gooseberry, and its supposed connection with the dull season, has more reality than popular belief generally credits it with. Tt at all events denotes a spirit emulation amongst the tillers of the soil, that not only should such para~ gous arise, but that their existence should be a matter of interest to the readers of the public press. We have no gigantic gooseberries in China, because the necessary spirit of emulation does not exist amongst the native population. No trae-born Chinaman cares to excel; he is content to arrive at the one dead level, and stop there as his forefathers have dove before bim. Exhibitions and horticultural shows, were the empire to'last for ten thousand years longer, we may feel assured would never have been introduced by the Chinese. It is quite possible we may see them copied one day; but as the main incentive to their success is wanting, we fear that, like any typical turnip, they would degenerate in Chinese bands so as scarcely to be recognisable by rheic original introducers. Sermons are hidden in stones; and if we seek for the reason beneath the surface, there may be a moral even in a big gooseberry. In China, as we said before, big gooseberries have no existence, and pears are tasteless, because the people are taught that improvement is-a Classical sin, and change an insult to the Sages; that progress should lie backwards, and that perfection is to be attained by the furthest retrogression. Covent Garden boasts the finest freit in the world —just_as Euston Square is an immense railway centre, and the Clyde a nursery of steamers—because Buropeans are as emulative as the Chinese are passive; because in the West old traditions are abandoned as ruthlessly, as here they are clung to tenaciously—in the presence of advantageous change because "onward, press onward" is adopted by the Nations as their motto, instead of the "backward, strive backward," of the Central Kingdom.
@utports.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.