giving him the victory in his life-long defence of the possibility of utter degeneracy! But we fear that the pleasure—which, as hard-headed thinker, he well deserves—is not reserved for him. * * * * * We fancy exploration, to become again thoroughly interesting, must be directed towards things, rather than places; the whole world being searched for things of value, and especially new dyes, new fibres, and new foods. We have always thought that there was nearly as much to interest men in Mr. Fortune’s hunt of years for the green indigo—which undoubtedly exists, though he failed to find it—as in any exploration of a new island. The delight of the American who has just discovered a cotton-plant six times as fruitful as the old variety, must be very keen, and not altogether tainted by the reflection—though that is unavoidable—that in such a plant there must be dollars. Just imagine what that man would do for mankind who found a new and vigorous potato, different from the plant which now grows in Ireland, and which is, according to a writer in the _Cornhill_, being propagated by cuttings, which is a single undivided plant, liable to inherit, through all its millions of apparently separate existences, the weaknesses of the original tuber, and liable also to exhaustion, as of old age. It has no children; only a power, so to speak, of having bits of its flesh cut off and planted. It is never renewed from seeds, and so, by all the analogies of Nature, will perish; though the banana, which also is never renewed—and, indeed, in one variety, has become seedless—has lasted ages. It is quite possible that there are only two bananas in the world. Or imagine a new and successful cereal,—a real one in the true silica armor, with a head twice as heavy, and grains twice as nutritious, as those of wheat. Why should wheat be the final source of bread? Man got saccharine matter from all sorts of things—grapes, honey, and fruits—from the earliest times; but he was old in the world, and had passed through many civilisations, before he discovered the cane and crushed the beet, and so got his present boundless store of sugar. A cereal as fruitful as wheat and as hardy as rye would change the face of Northern Europe; while one which could flourish on exhausted soil or in a damp climate, might affect the distribution of mankind. The direct gain of mankind from such a discovery might be counted by hundreds of millions; and we know of no law of Nature which should prevent it, and of no guarantee that the cultivating races have exhausted search. They most of them, in the early ages, when they longed for substitutes for fish, and meat, and berries, must have clutched the first edible grass they could find without much hunting for better. Farmers will smile, but there may be grains they never saw. Mincing Lane thinks it knows all about tea, and, no doubt, does know a good deal; but Mr. Alexander Hosie, of the Chinese Consular