ve met with.

Among the arguments for such arrangements as would promote the sale of
newspapers, we see little or no stress laid upon the _educational_,
which to us appears as the very strongest of all. The interest felt in
the occurrences of the passing day is one of the most vigorous of all
intellectual appetences. Give a man ready access to a journal in which
this taste can be gratified, and his intellectual progress is certain.
The utterly uneducated, seeing the pleasure which his fellows derive
from the paper, will desire to learn to read, that he may enjoy the
like pleasure. The man just able to read will be drawn on to reflect
and judge, and in time he will desire intellectual food from books
also. The cheap newspaper thus becomes a most powerful instrument for
nursing the popular mind; and, if we consider how essential it is,
where there are free institutions, that the bulk of the people should
be enlightened, we must see what a great public end is to be served by
this simple means. A place in the apparatus is, we think, rightly
claimed by the small local newspaper, as a kind of A B C, or _first
form_, where the young and untutored mind may be entered by way of
preparation for higher studies.

THE VEGETATION OF EUROPE.

The publication of the volume, the title of which appears below,[3] is
to be regarded as additional evidence that the tendency of science in
the present day is towards wider and more comprehensive
generalisations. Many readers who may be more or less familiar with
certain species or even families of plants, will hardly have prepared
themselves for a view of the phytology of a quarter of the globe, such
as is given in outline in the interesting work now before us. The
subject is one that has been largely investigated within the past
twenty years, as may be seen in the records of the British
Association, in the transactions of learned societies, and in the
writings of numerous observers on the continent. Attempt after attempt
has been made to explain the causes of the variations and effects of
climate, their influence on vegetation, the appearance of certain
floras in localities where they might be least expected, and to
separate the natural and regular from the accidental. Different
countries have been examined and compared with each other, and many of
the differences accounted for; and in Mr Henfrey's volume we have an
acceptable _resume_ of these various researches.

It becomes nece