SHORT AND SAPONACEOUS.
SOME of Mr. Punch's contemporaries have been circulating, together with other small change, an account of a plant, newly discovered in California by a Viennese. This plant, they say, "is about a foot in height, and fades away in May, revealing to the astonished botanist a ball of natural soap, contained within its stalk, and superior to the best brown Windsor." They have forgotten, however, to add some particulars, which Mr. Punch, in his zeal for the public service, has taken pains to collect. He has ascertained that, out of one hundred and twenty-nine persons who have read this paragraph, thirty-two have observed, "that the properties of the plant are evidently soap-orific;" twenty-eight have opined "that, when Nature planted it in California she must have had an eye to the gold-washing;" sixty have pronounced authoritatively, "that the discoverer of the plant ought at once to be made a Companion of the Bath;" eight have expressed their surprise "that it should have been discovered by a German, who could have had but little previous knowledge of the article which it is said to produce;" whilst the remaining person, an eminent boiler in the City, who prides himself upon his French accent, remarked that, "they might say it had been discovered by a German naturalist, but that, for his part, he should always think it had been found out by a French savon." Mr. Punch has further ascertained that, in the Californian dialect of the language of flowers, this plant signifies "I wash my hands of you!" and is employed by ladies to intimate their rejection of an unwelcome suit.