But it is of no use to joke on this subject; Niagara is, both to the United States and to England, but especially to Canada, a public property. It is the greatest wonder of the visible world here below, and should be protected from the rapacity of private speculations, and not made a Greenwich fair of; where pedlars and thimble-riggers, niggers and barkers, the lowest trulls and the vilest scum of society, congregate to disgust and annoy the visitors from all parts of the world, plundering and pestering them without control. The only really pretty thing on the British side is the Museum, the result of the indefatigable labours of Mr. Barnett, a person who, by his own unassisted industry, has gathered together a most interesting collection of animals, shells, coins, &c., and has added a garden, in which all the choicest plants and flowers of North America and of Britain grow, watered by the incessant spray of the Great Fall. In this garden I saw, for the first time in Canada, the English holly, the box, the heath, and the ivy; and there is a willow from the St. Helena stock. It requires unremitting watchfulness, however, to keep all this together, for _loafers_ are rife in these parts. He had gathered a very choice collection of coins, which was placed in a glass case in the Museum. A loafer cast his eye upon them, visited the Museum frequently, until he fully comprehended the whereabouts, and then, by the help of a comrade or two, broke a window-pane, passed through a glazed division of stuffed snakes, &c., and bore off his prize in the dead of the night. By advertising in time, and by dint of much exertion, the greater part was recovered, but the proprietor has not dared publicly to exhibit them since. He is now forming a menagerie, and also has a collection of fossils and minerals from the neighbourhood, with a camera obscura. He is, in short, a specimen of what untiring industry can accomplish, even when unassisted. There are some tulip-trees near the Falls, but this plant does not grow to any size so far north; and, although native to the soil, it is, perhaps, the extreme limit of its range. The snake-wood, a sort of slender bush, is found here, with very many other rare Canadian plants, which are no doubt fostered by the continual humidity of the place; and, if you wish to sup full of horrors,[4] Mr. Barnett has plenty of live rattlesnakes. [Footnote 4: This puts me in mind of the vulgar received opinion that my godfather Fuseli supped on pork-steaks, to have horrid dreams. Originally said in joke, this absurd story has been repeated even by persons affecting respectability as writers. His Greek learning alone should have saved his memory from this.]