36 PROOBBDINGS OF THE 



Tlio Hip;h Oommissioner suitably acknow ledf^ed tlip award, which 

 he felt would he greatly appreciated throughout Ihe Douiiiiiou 

 oF New Zealand, and undertook to transmit the medal to 

 Mr. Cheesenuui. 



The General Secretary having placed on the table the obituaries 

 of deceased Fellows, the proceedings teriniuated. 



OBITUAEY NOTICES. 



After several months of illness consequent upon an overstrained 

 heart, the result of unremitting labour in his Edinburgh position, 

 Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, K.BJ*]., passed away at Courts Hill, 

 llaslemere, on the 30th November, 1922. The son of John 

 Hutton Jialfour, Professor of Botany at Edinburgh from 1845 to 

 1870 (known to generations of students as ' AVoody Fibre'), he 

 was born in that city on the 31st of March, 1853, was educated at 

 Edinburgli Academy, in turn jiassing through the Universities of 

 Edinburgh, Strasshurg, and AViirzburg — liis inherited tendency 

 to botany being thus thoroughly called forth and trained ; and 

 besides taking D.Sc. at Edinburgh, he matriculated also in the 

 faculty of medicine. 



In 1874, whilst still an undergraduate, he was attached to the 

 party which in 1874 proceeded to liodriguez to observe a ti'ansit 

 of Venus, and brought home his first foreign botanical collections. 

 Resuming his medical studies, he graduated M.B. in 1877, pro- 

 ceeding to M.D. in due course in 1883 ; for botanic purposes he 

 studied abroad as already mentioned. 



He was appointed Professor of Botany at Glasgow in 1879, at the 

 early age of 26; the next year he \\ent to Socotra, there making 

 ample collections, which took several years to work out. When 

 practically complete, he offered his results for publication in our 

 Transactions, but stipulated that they should not be published in 

 successive parts, but in a volume. This could not be done as 

 demanded, but the author succeeded in inducing the Eoyal Society 

 of Edinburgh to publish the well-known substantial volume in 

 1888, of 44(3 pages and 100 quarto plates, forming vol. xxxi. of the 

 Transactions of the Edinburgh Society. 



Before this volume appeared, he was appointed Sherardian 

 Professor of Botany at Oxford, and soon made his presence felt. 

 The old connection of the Baxters was ended, the younger Baxter 

 leaving. The arrangement of the beds was altered, and other 

 changes were rapidly made, as for instance, in the herbarium, 

 where the volumes of the Du Bois collection were cut up, ami the 

 sheets distributed amongst their congeners in the general her- 

 bariinu. Happily the Morisonian and Dillenian collections were 

 spared the like fate, but his presence was a stimulus after the 

 tranquil reign of Pruf. M. A. Law son. 



