Tae unusually fine show of Chrysanthemama this year has made the Public Gardens and the Green House very attractive during the last week or two, and for this the community is mach indebted to the Hunorary Secretary to the Garden Committee, China is the original home of these flowers, and those who remember the displays of them in the Temple Gardens will be able to compare them as produced here under the careful supervision of Euglishmen, with the best that London is able to exhibit, We do not think that Shanghai need fear comparison, this year, ab all events, when these flowers bnepass anything we have hitherto seen, for richness and variety of ovlour and form, And in a few dass the yourly show of Chinese cultivated chrysanthemums in the City will afford na a opportanity of judging how fur we have come up to, or equal, or excel these flowers when they are cultivated sulaly by who are, so fond of them, The common love of flowers is one of there sentiments which bind the East and West together, 'I'he foreign resident in China everywhere notices that the people of this country have honrts that can admire that thing of Denuty that grows out of the groun Tf you travel in the mountains, the Chinese seem strangely insensible to the loveliness of the scenery, and when the sunset la gorgeous, the mule-driver wud the country farmer on his donkey never seem to admire it, But man, woman and child have a love for flowers, ind, this chow. iigelf i BY bolt the fourth century that a species of willow, with short leaves and lent stalko and with purple flowers, was much valued ut that time on account of its flower resembling ® crane, in having fall formed bonk, wings, trill-feathers and feet. A grub lived upon it which when it became old was metamorphosed into baterfly of w red and yellow colour, Women kept this as a pretty toy and called it the bewitching butter fly, beonuse it was supposed to have the r to muke their husbands love time also the Jessamine Wa, recent arrivals from Arabia, were groutly esteemed for their fragrance, because it was noticed that most unive Chinese flowers were sceutless, hose two plants were not like the orange which, when removed to a more northern climate becomes a mere hedge thorn with no fragrance. Foud of their sweet odour, women bound these with threads of various and put them in their hair, As it was long ago, so it is now, Chinese women and girls never like to be without a flower in rheic hair, If they can have a scented lilac they feel moat happy. If it is a flower not fragrant, they are loppy, though somewhat less so, Bat when they cannot get flowers from the house.court in the city, or the garden in the country, they will buy an artificial fower which imitates moderately well the real one, and this will still make them happy and vain, though to a slighter extent, Everyone knows that the artificial flower mauufueture is an industry of enormous proportions in this country. It employs thousands of hands in large cities, and is distributed among the families of (he poor, so that the emall and lissom fingera, that are not engaged in embroidery or other needlework for the use of the rich, may still have an occupation, which, while it brings them in a little money, also cultivates their taste, But even the classics, old as they are, have evidence on this point, us may be seen by looking into The n al characteristics of the gardens, The China aster has of course gone from this country to Eng. land, The balsam grows wild in some parts of the Presidency of Bengal and as spread from thence as a favourite garden plant to the most distant countries When the skilled English and German workmen come in thousands, a8 they will do to aid in manufactures and in the mining and railway industry of China in coming years, the love of plants which they bring with them and which they will find among Chinese workpeople with whom they will be in contact, will awaken a sympathy which will help powerfully to maintain harmony. The utility, moral and social, of the love of flowers is manifest when it is considered how this feeling helps meu of different races to think kindly of each othe:
Chinese can be traced in the germ in the Book of Odes as well as in any production of their literature. When Sir John Lubbock was lately selecting from the world's literature a hundred books that should be specially read no epitome of the whole, he placed among them the Confucian Clnssice, What could be his motive? Is not Confucius himself somewhat dull? Is not wanting, imagination, and has he not limited himself too much a historian to the moral duty of a public censor? To this it may be replied that the accusation is true, Hoe was eousible himself to the power of historic teaching in others, bat he Incked his. toric genius himeelf, There is this, however, to be suid for Confucius. He has preserved for us the Book of Odes, which describes, with @ thousand Saat Gates oF The dine of thes ing, tone troth d nature,
Kings of Israel and Judah, his would please Sir John Lubbock, are Ube perch, the plain, the bignonia, the lotus, the cherry tree. The luxariauce of the leaves of the pear caught the poet's eye. Wherever he saw the mul borry tree with ite soft green he was pleased. The millet then as now covered the plains of the North, At that time the never-coos call for firewood populous China had not yet bared the monntning of their trees, and there were forests which equalised the climate and rendered the famines of later impossible, The monkeys, and antelopes, coald live in old China as they cannot now, because there was in many places an extensive forest gion. All this is depicted in the Book of Odes, and it shows that the Chinese, as a people, were then in some essential much the same that they now are, The commonest flowers among the poor Chinese, and found in the little gardens of the cottages scattered over the face of their country, are such as the China aster, the convulvalus, the balsam, the hollyhock, Every cottager, man or woman, likes to have them and will not be without them if he or she can help it. These are the very plants which with others uukuowu here are also common enough in English cottage THE RACE MEETING, Man, being reasonable, must organise his play as well as his work, He has been defined as the only animal that laughs, and this may be token perhaps to mean that ho only animal amuses Limself consciously and inten tionally, The young of all, and even the old of some animals play, but man the only animal that plays tically; when the other animale ore gnnise themselves into be of them do, it is for the of life, the providing them 3 or food. It is re ed man to ce-operate in the provision of recreation; and wilh the English stock and ceudante, the racing of horses is the highest form amusement, A writer in the China told na not long ago, that the Tartare of old amused themselves with horse-races, and to this day the Manchus at Peking show much more interest in the races than the Chinese do, In whatever country of Europe racing li been introduced on a Inrge scale, has been imported from England; the slang of the race-coarse is Huglish all over the world, The misguided people who think that racing requires any apology are apt to justify it on the ground that it improves the breed of horses; a statement which is true in itself, but whose only value is to entiefy the consciences of those who would otherwise pretend to be shocked at public money being given for Queen's Plates. Ofraoing generally, however, we way aver with Mr. Hule's Double, that "so much hus been said and, on the whole, so well said," that we may torn to our more immediate object, the Shanghai Autumn Meeting, whi just over, There is a general consent that it has been a successful meeting on the whole, As usual a large nome ber of people, who hoped for better lack, have lost more or less money, and a few, who hardly expected it, have made money; and as mau difforenes himself again from the beasts by being a betting animal, only the sternest moralist will find fault with this harmless and temporary transfer
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.