KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 

325 

the Chinaman had his printing-press, and 
the Chinese devil rolled the forms in the 
glare of wax-light. Yang-tse wrote on 
currency, ere Cobbett’s triple-grandsire was 
mooted in the way of human generation; 
‘paper against gold” was the rule, before the 
Irish had got rid of their ring money; and 
book-keeping was a science when Falstafi’s 
score was registered in chalk at the Boar of 
EKastcheap, and the Exchequer accounts were 
kept with wooden talleys. Squibs, crackers, 
and Roman candles were “ let off” in 
Nanking, before Western scholars began to 
wrangle about the Greek fire and what it 
was not, and before small boys made annual 
bonfires and plagued their seniors by fasten- 
ing juvenile bombshells to their skirts in 
honor of Guido Fawkes. Europe, to speak 
paradoxically and yet truly, was ten centuries 
behind China, and is yet twelve centuries 
before it. 
Seriously, it is really astonishing—when 
we consider the amount of progress that the 
Chinese had made in the arts of civilisation, 
before Europe had emerged from her fens 
and forests,—how stationary they have been 
ever since! Science, art, learning, and litera- 
ture are all just as they were ages ago— 
neither better nor worse. And the Chinese 
character is the same also. The Chinaman 
is still a money-making animal—prudent, 
industrious, economical—contented with a 
handful of rice for his day’s labor ; and hap- 
pier than a mandarin with a red button if he 
can get but acup of arrack or a whiff of 
contraband poppy-juice. 
The abuse of opium, indeed, is the only 
sign of progress he has displayed of late 
years. We say progress, in this instance ; 
and it may seem sinful to connect progress 
with the manifestation of a vice; but there 
is really more hope of a sinner than of a 
negative saint. ‘There is hope of repentance 
in the one case; in the other case none. 
The Chinaman is still timid; and still cruel. 
He is still craity and indirect; and never so 
much in his element as when heis mystifying 
or bamboozling his neighbor. He is withal a 
merry rogue—jokes in his greatest tribula- 
tion, and never dies of a broken heart ! 
CRITIC. 
“QDD,”—BUT TRUE. 

THERE is a feeling in nature affecting even the 
instinct, as itis called, of dumb animals, which 
teaches them to fly from misfortune. The deer 
will butt a sick, or wounded buck, from the herd. 
Hunt a dog, and the whole kennel will fall on 
him and worry him. Fishes devour their own 
kind, when wounded with a spear, hook, &c. Cut 
a crow’s wing, or break his leg, and the others 
will buffet him to death. By the same rule, let a 
man be “going down hill,” and everybody will 
be disposed to give him akick. We see all this 
daily. 
BOTANICAL NOTES. 
THE SALCOMBE ALOES, erc. 
BY A DEVONIAN. 

I HAVE RECENTLY, MY DEAR SIR, become 
a subscriber to your very excellent JOURNAL, 
or, as it is familiarly and properly called, 
Our JOURNAL. Observing the wideness of 
its scope, and the multitude of subjects on 
which it treats, it has occurred to me that I 
might contribute something of public inte- 
rest from this part of the country—Devon- 
shire. I therefore forward you the subjoined 
paper on the Aloe, &c. 
Believing that there is no part of England 
where so many plants of that beautiful exotic, 
the Agave Americana, have come to maturity 
in the open ground without the slightest pro- 
tection, 1 am induced to send you a short ac- 
count of the specimens that have flowered at 
Salcombe, a flourishing seaport, near Kings- 
bridge, in the south of Devon; where they are 
perfectly acclimated, and where they may be 
seen growing as luxuriantly as in their native 
climate. 
The first aloe recorded to have flowered at 
Salcombe did so in 1774; and I extract the 
following account of it, together with the 
handbill then circulated, from the History of 
Kingsbridge and Salcombe, by Abraham 
Hawkins, Esq., of Alston, published in 1819. 
At the 80th page is the description, as 
follows :— 
“In the summer of 1774, a large aloe, the 
Agave Americana, only 28 years old, and which 
had always stood in the open ground without 
covering, flowered here in a garden belonging at 
that time to the representatives of a Mr. Barrable, 
the principal custom-house officer, then recently 
deceased ; but which at present forms the grass- 
plot before the windows of what has lately re- 
ceived the appellation of Cliff House. (it is 
now the property and summer residence of Mrs. 
Walter Prideaux.) ‘It grew to the height of 
28 feet; the leaves were 6 inches thick, and 9 
feet in length; and the flowers, on 42 branches, 
innumerable. In the middle of June it was first 
observed to have shot forth a flower-stem, in nearly 
a horizontal direction. Presently it elevated its 
head to an angle of 45 degrees, and in less than 
a fortnight became perpendicular; making a pro- 
gress almost visible to the bystanders, and in- 
creasing in extent about 9 inches a day. By the 
month of August it had reached a height of 20 
feet, as the handbills then distributed expressed; 
though, by the end of September, it had risen 8 
feet more. It need scarcely be added, that the 
plant perished at the close of Autumn ; but many 
of the unsevered suckers around, which all these 
plants incidentally produce, and are the usual 
means of their propagation, flowered also at the 
close of the season, and though scarcely above a 
foot high, were perfect resemblances of their 
parent prototype.” 
The following is a copy, with the original 
orthography, of the handbills above men- 

