Maintains its rank in sober, we mean useful, literature.  The volume before us contains such matter as is only to be found in large and expensive works, with a host of annotations from the journals of recent travellers and other volumes which bear upon the main subject.  This part of the series, describing vegetable substances used for the food of man, is executed with considerable minuteness.  A Pythagorean would gloat over its accuracy, and a vegetable diet man would become inflated with its success in establishing his eccentricities.  The contents are the Corn-plants, Esculent Roots, Herbs, Spices, Tea, Coffee, &c. &c.  In such a multiplicity of facts as the history of these plants must necessarily include, some misstatements may be expected.  For example, the opinion that succory is superior to coffee, though supported by Drs. Howison and Duncan, is not entitled to notice.  All over the continent, succory, or chicoree, is used to adulterate coffee, notwithstanding which a few scheming persons have attempted to introduce it in this country as an improvement, by selling it at four times its worth.  Why say “it is sometimes considered superior to the exotic berry,” and in the same page, “it is not likely to gain much esteem, where economy is not the consideration.”  We looked in vain for mention of the President of the Horticultural Society under Celery; though we never eat a fine head of this delicious vegetable without grateful recollection of Mr. T.A.  Knight.  All preachment of the economy of the Potato is judiciously omitted, though we fear to the displeasure of Sir John Sinclair; nor is there more space devoted to this overpraised root than it deserves.  Truffles are not only used “like mushrooms,” but for stuffing game and poultry, especially in France:  who does not remember the perdrixaux truffes, of the Parisian carte.  The chapter on coffee, cacao, tea, and sugar, is brief but entertaining.  We may observe, by the way, that one of the obstacles to the profitable cultivation of tea in this country is our ignorance of the modes of drying, &c. as practised in China.

Another volume of the Entertaining Series, published since that just noticed, contains a selection of Criminal Trials, amongst which are those of Throckmorton and the Duke of Norfolk, for treason.  They are, in the main, reprints from the State Trials, which the professional editor states to contain a large fund of instruction and entertainment.  We have been deceived in the latter quality, though we must admit that in judicious hands, a volume of untiring interest might be wrought up from the State records.  As they are, their dulness and prolixity are past endurance.  As the present work proceeds in chronological order, it will doubtless improve in its entertaining character, since no class of literature has been more enriched by the publication of journals, diaries, &c., than historical biography, which will thus enable the editor to enliven his pages with characteristic traits of the principal actors.  This has been done, to some extent, in the portion before us, and in like manner fits the volume for popular reading.