16 SEPTEMBER 1865, Page 2

Dr. Acland, in his address as President to the Sub-Section

of Physiology of the British Association at Birmingham, made a real point when he asked why physiology was treated by the British Association as a sub-section at all ? " Being," he said, " when properly considered, the most complicated of all the subject-matter debated at this association it cannot be really subordinate to any, least of all to zoology and botany, which it distinctly includes. It may be an open question whether physiology be a branch of physics and chemistry ; it is not an open question whether it in- chilies the knowledge of the characteristics upon which the classi-

fication of all entities that are said to have life is based." This point was merely incidental to the main object of the address, which was to prove that the study of physiology and medicine ought not, as some writers wish, to be dissociated. Evidently not. But Dr. Acland proves what needed no proof with all the courtesy of an accomplished Oxonian.