entire system adopted by the Board was confessedly bad :-that when the Board did possess power and patronage it was used, never from public considerations, but from private views:-that men of worth and talent were neglected, while the idle, the careless, the most indifferent, and the most ignorant, were protected and promoted :-that, in short, cringing, idleness, neglect, and ignorance had a better chance, under the Board, than talent and industry :-that, through this depraving system, he has known officers become 'old Indians, with all their follies, before they had been two years in India:'-that the chief boast of the members was the number of years they had lived in India :-that so unworthy was the conduct of the Board, in the important matter of patronage, that this power was obliged to be withdrawn by a special and direct order from the Home Government :-that, however respectable in private life some individual members, Boards constituted like those of India, never have, and never can command the confidence of Government, the respect of the services, or of the profession at large :-that in truth they degrade the profession, and injure the Service :—that it is hoped the recent improvements in the pensions and in the mode of promotion, ordered by the Home Government, will prove beneficial, if the latter be rigorously and systematically acted on that whatever the Indian medical services may formerly have been, there were amongst them, and there are now in greater numbers, men of as high a character for talent and experience, as in any public service in the world :-that from such men as these the most efficient staff might at all times, and may now, be selected :—that it is only be. cause men of an opposite character have hitherto been placed in the higher stations that the whole establishment has been contemned, underrated, and undervalued."

That, after a full and careful consideration of the whole subject, Mr. Annesley would recommend that the medical services of India be made immediately to approximate, as nearly as possible, to that of Her Majesty's army."

It is requisite, for a full understanding of the subject, to give here Mr. Martin's closing summary in his statement to the Chairs of what he conceived the Indian Medical Service required.

1st. That pension, according to length of service, be extended to the medical service of India, the same as granted to the officers of the Indian army, and as accorded by the British Government to the medical branch of the Royal Army; also, that the superior medical officers be entitled to their pensions from the date of their respective commissions, in common with the military officers in India, and with the medical officers of Her Majesty's Service.

2nd. That honors and rewards, proportionate to its services and experience in actual war, be awarded to the Indian Medical Department, and such as are granted to the medical branch of the Royal Army.

3rd. That grades similar to those of the Royal Service be established in the Medical Department of India, and that the Governments be no longer limited in their selection for staff and other medical officers to mere seniority; but that, after the prescribed period of seventeen years' service, all officers of character, and who may have served with credit with troops in the field, be eligible to the higher staff and other employ

ments; professional character, and military experience in actual service, being indispensable.

4th. That no medical officer, of whatever rank, be allowed to continue longer than three years at a civil station, or in civil employment of any kind, with the exception of large cities, as already mentioned.

5th. That the very injurious custom hitherto prevalent, of permitting officers to resign the active branch of the service, still holding for life staff and other responsible offices, be discontinued; and that, for the future, all such as desire to abandon the active duties of the profession be struck off the effective list, and transferred to the Invalid Establishment.

Of these proposals only one, the first, has been carried out, and even that not completely. The original Draft of the Boon, as laid down in the document forwarded by the Military Committee of the Court of Directors to the Board of Control, included a pension of £250. a year after 24 years of service, three for furlough included, but the Controlling Board drew a pen through it, why is best known to the Board itself. A service of 17 years in a Tropical climate is so long that, with the changed and changing notions and circumstances of the present day, when steam communication affords a speedy transit to their native land, many will prefer to retire at once, and looking to a cheap residence abroad, or some employ in addition to their pension at home, to the risk of staying on for eight years longer before getting the higher rate of pension. Accordingly some of the ablest men in the service have retired and contemplate retiring before that period, of whom Mr. Martin himself is a striking example.

On the alleged indefeasible "right" to be promoted by "the good old rule, the simple plan," of the muster-roll, and on the actually indefeasible "right" of the Honorable East India Company to make what rules and regulations they may please for the promotion and administration of their services, we have said nothing-deeming such discussion a waste of time and of words. Whatever "the good old rule, the simple plan" of rising to seniority honours in the Medical Department of the South may have been, we can assure our brethren there that, to the North and East of them, a less absolute rule has long existed, though unhappily, as Mr. Martin states, it has been allowed to remain a dead letter. But here is the rule:

"The Governor-General in Council deems it proper to declare, with reference to the principle established by the existing regulations of Government on the subject, and of the great importance of the duties to be performed by superintending surgeons, that the succession to such appointments will not depend on seniority alone, but that the selection will be made with reference to established character for distinguished zeal-strict assiduity, and professional ability, due regard however being had to seniority where not opposed by considerations of a still more powerful nature."-Bengal Medical Code, Chap. I, Section 2, Paragraph 2.

I. ORGANIC CHEMISTRY, IN ITS APPLICATIONS TO AGRICULTURE AND PHYSIOLOGY. By Justus Liebig, M.D. &c. Edited by Lyon Playfair, Ph. D. 8vo. pp. 384. London: Taylor and Walton.

II. ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY AND GEOLOGY. By J. F. W. Johnston, F.R.S. 12mo. pp. 250. Blackwood,

Ir needs not, we should think, any argument to prove that it is absolutely necessary for medical men-if they expect to maintain that position in educated society which their profession may justly challenge, and which moreover all classes seem very willing to concede-to keep themselves up to the level of the existing state of science, especially of those branches of it which more immediately appertain to the general course of their studies. Chemistry is one of these, and a most important one it is; Botany, and indeed all natural history, is another; comparative Anatomy and Pathology (veterinary medicine) is a third; Geology and Meteorology are a fourth. A competent knowledge of these pursuits-besides throwing a dignified grace around the character of every man-will tend to correct many errors into which the unceasing occupation in the daily duties of his profession is apt to lead the practising physician; it will accustom him to take broad and comprehensive views on every question that is submitted to his notice, by enabling him to compare a multitude of facts with each other, and by teaching him to observe the mutual dependence and reciprocal action of the different objects in nature, and of the varied, though harmonious, agencies that are continually at work throughout its several kingdoms.

The great discoveries of medical science have all been made by men who were accomplished philosophers as well as eminent practitioners: we have only to point to those of Harvey, John Hunter, and Jenner. It is a very vulgar mistake to suppose that a due attention to matters of science, or even to the accomplishments of literature, is at all incompatible with a most assiduous and successful pursuit of active practice. It is far otherwise; the mind requires to be refreshed and enlarged by diversity of occupation to enable it to persevere with energy in its accustomed duties; and he, we may be assured, will generally make the best practical man, who can withdraw himself at intervals from the toil and turmoil of his daily occupations, and find a grateful refuge amid the pursuits of an enlarged and varied philosophy.

Medicine, it should be remembered, is, strictly speaking, one of the branches of physical science, and deserves to be studied and examined quite independently of its practical application to the relief of suffering. There are laws, no doubt, which regulate the development and the diffusion of diseases, just as there are laws which preside over the various changes and fluctuations of the ocean and the atmosphere. Who can look back upon the strange march of the pestilential Cholera ten years ago-starting from the fervid fields of India, and stalking on with slow but steady march across the steppes of Tartary to Russia, Denmark, Prussia, France and Britain; then traversing the broad Atlantic, and, after striking terror into

the inhabitants of the New World, returning once more to Europe to visit its southern shores-without feeling the truth of this position? And if this be the case with the Cholera, so it is with almost all epidemic and with many endemic diseases: their origin, their progress and their decline are, we have every reason to believe, owing to the operation of certain physical agencies which are at work throughout the whole system of the universe, and the discovery of which, (though they are but imperfectly appreciable by us,) may yet reward the labours of some future enquirers.

But let us not be led away by any general disquisition from the more immediate object of the present article, which is to take a rapid survey of the great general truths of Vegetable Chemistry, and to point out the most striking relations that exist between the two kingdoms of living nature, animal and vegetable beings-their mutual dependences, their reciprocal actions, the sources whence they derive their elementary constituents, and the changes which they are constantly producing in the inorganic world around them.

There is not a greater marvel in the whole range of physical science than the fact of the countless diversities in the form, structure and visible appearances of organised matter contrasted with the elemental simplicity of its constitution. When we learn that every part of every plant and of every animal-from the moss to the cedar, and from the monad to manis made up of but a few simple ingredients, and that all the exquisite machinery of their framework is composed of, and ultimately resolvable into, a little carbon and hydrogen, oxygen and azote, along with some saline or earthy matter, we feel from the first moment the utter hopelessness of ever being able fully to understand how these things can be. But although a dark veil hangs over such mysteries, we shall not be without our reward, if we will submit patiently to enquire and attentively to examine : for certainly most wonderful are the truths that have already been discovered. How marvellous the one fact that it is from the very dust of the valley, and from the air which we breathe, that there are produced and sustained all the glorious mechanisms of animal and vegetable life!

Independently of, but nevertheless in beautiful accordance with, the disclosures of revealed Truth, one of the earliest facts that arrests our attention is, that the creation of vegetable must necessarily have preceded that of animal beings. The former are designed to prepare the way for the very existence and support of the latter. No animal, we have reason to believe, can derive nourishment from or live upon inorganic substances; these may serve indeed to appease the cravings of hunger, but they cannot afford any supply of nourishment to the creature. Plants are manifestly the intermediate link and bond of connection between the animal and the mineral kingdoms of nature. They are endowed with the power of transferring the brute elements around them into organised productions; they suck in water and absorb atmospheric air, and, after decomposing them, they recombine their constituents in various modes, and thus assimilate them with the very texture and framework of their own systems. At the same time they associate unto themselves a certain quantity of earthy matter from the ground from which they spring-different alkaline and metallic salts, which are not only necessary for their own complete development, but are afterwards destined to become essential ingredients of ani

mal bodies. Whence, for example, is the earthy matter of the bones, the various salts that abound in the urine and other fluids, the iron that is always present in the blood, &c. to be derived, except from the food on which the animal lives? Now (thanks to the discoveries of vegetable chemistry) all these substances can be proved to exist in the constitution of plants; and these, as we shall afterwards shew, obtain them all from the soil on which they grow. We thus at once perceive the necessity of our extending our enquiries beyond any one department of Nature's works, if we hope to arrive at a philosophic knowledge of its phenomena. This holds true especially of Animal Physiology; no rational system of this beautiful science can be constructed without a continual reference to the organisation and functions of plants.

Many, we know, entertain a vague and undefined idea that a living body has some mysterious power of generating or creating within itself some, if not all, of these substances to which we have been alluding; and certainly, until chemical science had attained that degree of exactitude to which it has reached only within the present century, it was scarcely possible to form even a probable conjecture as to the manner in which they were obtained. But this uncertainty is now past; for we know by the most undeniable experiments on the one hand, that there is not an element which enters into the constitution of an animal body, that does not exist in plants; and on the other, that there is not an element in the latter that cannot be proved to be derived from the mineral or inorganic kingdom. How emphatically true then is it of every living thing, that "dust it is, and unto dust it shall return." The decay of one generation serves but to supply the elements for the development and growth of a succeeding one; there is a constant and ever recurring cycle of life and death, of formation and dissolution; what was active yesterday is to day returning to its primal elements; and the very dust, that we trod upon an hour ago, is already becoming incorporated with a living frame, and will ere long be instinct with vitality.

The first question we propose to examine is the very curious one as to the source from which plants derive the various elements that enter into their composition.

We begin with Carbon. This elementary substance, it is well known, enters very largely into the framework of all vegetable matter. Its proportion, however, varies very greatly in different substances; as much as from 20 up to 80 per cent. We shall not perhaps exceed the truth if we state, in round numbers, that nearly one-half of the whole vegetable matter in the world consists of carbon or pure charcoal-a startling and seemingly at first an inexplicable announcement. Whence is it all derived? Hitherto it has been generally supposed that by far the greatest portion of this most necessary ingredient is obtained from the ground; and the language in common use has tended much to give rise to, and to perpetuate, this opinion. We talk of the rich and nutritious properties of certain soils, just in the same manner as we do of the fattening and restorative qualities of certain articles of food and drink to animals.

But there is a mistake in all this; for it is now ascertained, beyond a doubt, that no matter already organised can become assimilated with the