Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Horticulture, Human Species, Development, Gender

    Discusses a report of the Swedish aristocrat, Baron Creutz, who proposed that girls from the age of fifteen should be allowed to answer offers of marriage 'of their own accord'. The proposal was opposed by M Montgomery, who thought that twenty-five was the age at which women were capable of answering this question. Points out that 'Southern plants are known to shoot up at an age' which Creutz 'would fix for the maturity of the Swedish species of turnip', and that if his views are correct, then 'Juliets are found in higher latitudes' than previously supposed. Montgomery's opinion, however, suggests that 'the Swede must be a vegetable of slowish growth' since at the age of twenty-five, 'such produce' (women) 'has passed by four years the term at which it becomes capable of disposing of itself'. Punch thinks that 'the truth' lies somewhere between the views of Creutz and Montgomery, and suggests that Creutz try to sell his 'fine early Swedes' at British agricultural exhibitions.