TO 
ISAAC BAYLEY BALFOUR, D.Sc., M.D., F.RS., &., &., 
Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh. 
My pear Batrovr, 
When, in 1872, I dedicated to my old and valued 
friend, your father, the Ninety-eighth Volume of the 
Boranicat Magazine, your career as a student of Botany | 
in the University of Edinburgh encouraged me to hope 
that I might live to add your name to those of the dis- 
tinguished cultivators of that science whose services as 
such it has been my father’s and my own privilege to 
commemorate in successive volumes of this work, 
My hopes have been abundantly realized. As an in- 
vestigator of the Natural History of Rodriguez and of 
Socotra, and as a describer of the vegetation of those re- 
markable islands, you have shown yourself to be a very 
able botanist. As Professor of Botany successively in the 
Universities of Glasgow and of Oxford, you have left your 
mark on the museums and gardens of those venerable insti- 
tutions ; and it only remains for me to express the hope that 
the arduous duties of the chair you now hold, the greatest 
and most influential Botanical Chair in the Queen’s do- 
_ minions, may leave you leisure to continue as you began 
to reap laurels in the field of original research. 
Believe me, my dear Balfour, 
Sincerely yours, 
JOS. D. HOOKER, 
Roya Garpens, Kew, 
December 1st, 1889. 
