This is the time of year, and 1 imagine your experience in China will be the same, when any vegetables except last year's potatoes and carrots and. the eternal cabbage are bhard to get. French beans, new potatos and asparagus are available Dut stil at ruinous. prices. "So one hails with interest an article in "The Himes" on vegetables of which most people have probably never, heard, though it seems that our a'icestors knew them well.
Skirrets for example, ike medium. sized white carrots, are believed have originated in China. A 17th jeentury English "writer described. them as "the sweetest, whitest most pleasant of roots." Sliced up with chestnuts, yolks of eggs, lemon, ginger and nutmeg, "with butter poured over them and "closed raised coffin of pastry" they are said to make a most delectable dish, Scorzonera was grown by "Louis XIV's gardener as one of his most fimpertant vegetables. It is said to bbe something like salsify, but better in flavour and particularly yood for those given to Indigestion, Celerine, rather like a turnip to look at, is said to have been long used," in severn: varieties, on the Continent, but oily one kind is known In Enge and dad that T should think by few people. It is usually lifted October, but improves. in flavour It Jett in the ground through the winter, Lastly a vegetable familiar in general species, but in a class by itself, "The Times" contributor says: tke eae! and "last" ts also Well easy enough to grow. But one won: ders how many seedsman list them in their catalogues, and what our [cooks would make of them, Report of a most joyatis pair Jchstenings comes from Billericay Essex, where Rosaire's Circus has been wintering, Young 'Texas Bill, one of the troupe, used to throw knives and flaming torches at Mr, Rosaire's daughter Cecil, in the ing. A year ago he married her and thelt fest born, a daughter, was christened today' inthe" parish church, Me, Rosaire's son Aubrey was also mar~ ried a year ago ¢he is a clown) and also had a daughter to be ehtistened So two of the circus elephants, Salt and Saucy, were decked up, a pair of proud parents mounted on each, "and so they proceeded to church, each elephant pushing Perambulator containing an. infant. Of course there was a vast crowd of spectators. But. the elephants performed their nursemaid duties with the greatest propriety, though at one moment Salt became rather fexelted and showed a tendency to wave his pram about in the alr, It ought have oather a useful initiation into the circus tricks, for which of course both babies are destined, but the parents thought their daughter bit too young, ud Salt was restrained, One is inclined to envy circus folk They live completely In a world of their own. Neither polities nor economics "affect them one jot. Nobody bothers as fo whether they are "Aryan, -non-Aryan, Scythian, bond or free. All frontiers are open pass through not mere-ned but welcomed," But tone must born into the eiteus to of it, It is a calling which, like Buckingham Palace,' desjeends from father to son, from mother to daughter. Not all its abies are pushed to church by elephants, but they are all metaphorically suckled in sawdust and aught to toddle on a trapeze, How id our ordinary life must seem to them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.