With a new story simmering on the back burner at Spurtle HQ, and a Ward 12 by-election hustings to prepare for this evening, we have no time to bring you today's news today.
Instead, here is some local information which is ever so past its sell-by date. It first appeared in the Caledonian Mercury on 16 January 1765, and its first sentence is 199 words long. Unusual by today's journalistic standards.
Unashamedly commercial, it is nevertheless one of the most charming short prose poems we can remember.
Will the new Logie Green Lidl be as good?
GARDEN SEEDS,
Just now arrived, and to be sold in wholesale and retail, as usual, by Drummond, Anderson, and Whyte, seedsmen, at their shop at the sign of the gilded Gardener, opposite to Libberton’s wynd, Lawn-market, Edinburgh, onion, leek, carrot, and all sorts of true and fresh garden seeds, Dutch lintseed, Canary, hemp, rape, and maw-feed for birds; all kinds of tools, spades, Spanish steel’d and polished; hot-bed matts, sieves, bell-glasses, bird and flower glasses, a large assortment of glass jarrs for painting, with all other kinds of glass-ware; Dutch flower-pots, painted and flowered, earthen ditto; Dutch pumps, water-spouts, watering pans, best hops, Lucca eating oil, flower of mustard, whole and split, green and white soft boiling pot-pease, peppermint-water, bird-lime, fine starch, hair-powder, scented and plain; all the kinds of writing-paper, cut, plain, mourning and gilt; sealing-wax and wafers, good black ink, Holman’s liquid and ink powder; goose and swan, Dutch and English pens, London mixed pins by weight; American and native tree-feeds, great oak-acorns, beech-mast, horse and sweet chestnuts, white Newfoundland spruce, &c. great choice of flower seeds, variety of Bulbous and Fibrous flower-roots, hyacinths, pollyanthus, narcissus’s, tulips, auricaculas, ranunculas, anemonies, having the late Mr. James Justice’s collection.
A large collection of the best kinds of fruit-trees and true of their kind, forrest trees, shrubs, evergreens, &c. at the London prices; a great quantity of thorns of different ages, from four shillings to fifteen shillings per thousand; collyflower, and all kinds of cabbage, asparagus and liquorice plants, to be seen at their nursery near Broughton. Large printed catalouges of their seeds, different kinds of trees and shrubs, evergreens, green-house plants, flowers, &c, to be had at their shop.
N. B. The only true Scots specifick anodyne necklace for assisting children in teething, with printed directions. Price 1 s. 6 d. each.
[Photos: Wikipedia, Creative Commons; teething child photo by Gerry T/Foter/Creative Commons.]