e Tenth, and Louis Philippe, more
recently, tried to trample down the Newspapers, and everybody knows how
the attempt resulted. The prevalence or scarcity of newspapers in a
country affords a sort of index to its social state. Where journals are
numerous, the people have power, intelligence, and wealth; where
journals are few, the many are in reality mere slaves. In the United
States every village has its newspaper, and every city a dozen of these
organs of popular sentiment. In England we know how numerous and how
influential for good the papers are; while in France they have perhaps
still greater power. Turn to Russia, where newspapers are comparatively
unknown, and we see the people sold with the earth they are compelled to
till. Austria, Italy, Spain, occupy positions between the extremes--the
rule holding good in all, that in proportion to the freedom of the press
is the freedom and prosperity of the people."

[From Sharpe's Magazine]

A FEW WORDS ON CORALS.

It is the object of the following papers to illustrate the natural
history of the ocean, and to introduce to the reader a few of the forms
of life which the naturalist meets with in the deep sea. The sea that
bathes the globe contains as countless multitudes of living beings as
does the land we tread, and each possesses an organization as
interesting and as peculiar to itself, as any of the higher forms of the
animal creation. But the interest does not cease here, for these marine
invertebrata play an important part in the vast economy of nature, some
living but to afford food for the larger kinds, others devouring all
matter devoid of vitality, and so removing all putrescent materials,
with which the sea would otherwise be surcharged; while others, again,
living in large communities, surely and slowly, by their gradual growth,
so alter the physical construction of the globe as to render seas and
harbors unnavigable, and in many eases even to give rise in course of
ages to those islands, apparently of spontaneous growth, which are so
common in the Southern Seas.

Corals and Madrepores first claim our attention, because they occupy the
lowest place, with the exception of sponges, in the animal scale!
Indeed, so low is their organization, that former naturalists denied
their animal character, and from superficial examination of their
external appearance, placed them among the wonders of the vegetable
world. And from the arborescent and plant-like for