INTRODUCTION. 13 



having meanwhile left Cambridge. Indeed, from this time on- 

 ward, he may be said to have made these lectures, in a certain 

 sense, the chief business of his life. He lectured all three terms, 

 devoting the Michaelmas and Lent terms to a systematic course 

 of Animal Morphology, and the Easter term to a more element- 

 ary course of Embryology. These lectures were given under 

 the auspices of Prof. Newton ; but Balfour's position was before 

 long confirmed by his being made a Lecturer of Trinity College, 

 the lectures which he gave at the New Museums, and which 

 were open to all students of the University, being accepted in a 

 liberal spirit by the College as equivalent to College Lectures. 

 He very soon found it desirable to divide the morphological 

 course into an elementary and an advanced course, and to 

 increase the number of his lectures from three to four a week. 

 Each lecture was followed by practical work, the students dis- 

 secting and examining microscopically, an animal or some 

 animals chosen as types to illustrate the subject-matter of the 

 lecture ; and although Balfour had the assistance at first of 

 one 1 , and ultimately of several demonstrators, he himself 

 put his hand to the plough, and after the lecture always spent 

 some time in the laboratory among his pupils. Had Balfour 

 been only an ordinary man, the zeal and energy which he threw 

 into his lectures, and into the supervision of the practical work, 

 added to the almost brotherly interest which he took in the 

 individual development of every one of the pupils who shewed 

 any love whatever for the subject, would have made him a most 

 successful teacher. But his talents and powers were such as 

 could not be hid even from beginners. His extensive and 

 exact knowledge, the clearness with which in spite of, or shall I 

 not rather say, by help of a certain want of fluency, he explained 

 difficult and abstruse matters, the trenchant way in which he lay 

 bare specious fallacies, and the presence in almost his every word 

 of that power which belongs only to the man who has thought 

 out for himself everything which he says, these things aroused 

 and indeed could hardly fail to arouse in his hearers feelings 

 which, except in the case of the very dullest, grew to be those of 



1 His first Demonstrator up to Christmas 1877, was Mr J. F. Bullar. In Jan. 

 1878, Mr Adam Sedgwick took the post of Senior Demonstrator, and held it until 

 Balfour's death. 



