i879-] NOTES FROM THE PAPERS. 77 



"magnificent city with stone houses eight and nine storeys high." Another 

 turn or two would lead him to the slums and closes about the "Old Flesh- 

 market," where he would find the " tripe," and a little further on in St Mary's 

 Wynd he would see the natives swallowing the whisky " without the glass 

 touching or nearing their lips," where he seems to have brought his visit to a 

 close, and gone south again to write for the ' Chronicle ' " A true and particular 

 account of Mr Worthington G. Smith's visit to Edinburgh and the north, and 

 all he saw there." It is distressing to learn that on the great subject of 

 " Puddock Stools," Edinburgh and the north is still under a cloud, and on 

 the whole we fear the haggis, the tripe, the whisky, the porridge, combined 

 with the air of the north generally, have been too much for the advocate of a 

 toad-stool diet and discoverer of the " resting -spore," who may have felt 

 just a little out of his latitude, and may be just a trifle neglected as well. 

 Porridge and whisky are good stiffeners of the spinal column, which, north 

 of the Tweed, supports a head that needs a hat a size larger than usual — hence, 

 probably, it is that the " salus " and the " resting-spore " are at a discount 

 there, and that in Mr W. G. Smith's mind the Modern Athens is associated 

 only with tripe, haggis, porridge, and whisky. 



" Little Dips in Lethe," by Shirley Hibberd, is the title of an article in the 

 last Christmas Number of the 'Gardener's Magazine.' What is "Lethe," 

 does the reader ask ? Well, being inexperienced, we would rather reserve our 

 opinion as to the nature of the compound in which Mr Shirley Hibberd 

 " dipped " more than once as he tells us ; but Mr Hibberd himself confesses that 

 " he felt as if he had taken Scotch whisky." He was conscious of that " agree- 

 able state of warmth and lightness " which the "whisky" imparts, and we may 

 be sure Mr Shirley Hibberd knows what he is talking about. After one of his 

 "dips,"* he says, " I now felt that madness had really come upon me, and I 

 began to bathe my temples and drink soda-water " — a cure, it may be here 

 mentioned, which has also been occasionally used successfully in cases of mad- 

 ness produced by other stimulants than "Lethe." But these were not the 

 only experiences of Mr S. Hibberd while under the influence of " Lethe." He 

 continues — " For a moment I paused, considering, and then the parietal bones 

 of my head expanded widely, as if parting at the sutures, and again collapsed 

 with a sort of shuffling sound," — a statement we do not doubt for a single 

 moment. This tendency of his head to expand seemed so great on one 

 occasion that it (his head) appeared "to fill the room." And he further 

 states that he went to bed while under the influence of the drug, and his 

 "head swelled to awful dimensions;" "but," he continues, "I was really 

 asleep, and never could call to mind at what time I went to bed, or at what 

 point of the illusion sleep came over me." Instances will no doubt occur to 

 the reader of people who have been similarly affected at times. Going to bed 

 and forgetting afterwards as to how and when that event happened is a not 

 uncommon experience to some people. Could it be at one of these periods of 

 abnormal expansion that Mr Shirley Hibberd evolved the great idea of " pulley - 

 trained fruit trees ? " And was that famous lecture which he delivered be- 

 fore the R. S. A. conceived under a similar inspiration ? It is exceedingly 

 desirable that we should know this, because there are many horticultural 

 and other writers "with hard-bound brains," who would be benefited by a 

 little "expansion " of their top storey. Altogether we regard ," Little Dips in 

 Lethe " as one of the most suggestive contributions to the literature of the 

 ' Gardener's Magazine ' that has yet appeared in its pages. Reader. 



* Query "nips,"— Printers' Devil. 



