30 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



Finally, it may be added tliat Lamarck liotices that man, of all 

 animals, is the only one who foresees and fears death. He asserts 

 that this terrible faculty stimulates in definite directions. Le hien- 

 etre is good for man. Had man's heart only nerves from the 

 spinal cord and not also from the eighth cerebral pair, it Avould 

 not have been subject to the empire of the passions. Kature 

 never acting otherwise than gradually, and not being able to 

 produce animals otlierwise than successively, has evidently pro- 

 ceeded in this production from the most simple to the most 

 complicated. 



These thoughts were the favourite themes of Lamarck in the 

 beginning of tliis century. 



AV^hat a difference there was between these two students of 

 Nature ! Linna;us essentially observant and loving positive know- 

 ledge — industrious, light-hearted, increasing year by year in 

 wealth after a time of great poverty, dying regretted and 

 honoured by his country. Lamarck observant, infinitely reflec- 

 tive, and dealing with the subjective wherever he had the oppor- 

 tunity, painstaking, ever labouring, ever rising in the estimation 

 of his fellow' labourers, yet sinking into abject poverty and 

 neglect. Tet in his days of misery Lamarck never was other- 

 wise than resigned ; and the sentences in the ' Philosophie Zoo- 

 logique ' which relate to the moral conduct of Man are more noble 

 than those of Socrates. 



Obittjahies. 



John Hutto>" Balfotje was born in Edinburgh on September 

 15th, ISOS, and died on lltli rebiunry, IbSi, at Inverleitli 

 House in the same city. Passing bis early years of education 

 at the famous High School, he studied in the Universities of 

 St. Andrews and Edinburgh, graduating at the latter in Arts 

 and Medicine. He decided on a medical profession, after some 

 time spent in Continental Schools, although his first bent was 

 towards the Church. During his early years of medical practice, 

 his inclinalions induced him to pursue the study of plants beyond 

 the needed limits of the curriculum, no doubt stimulated thereto 

 by the influence and example of Prof. Eobert G-j-aham, who ti)en 

 occupied the Chair of Botany at Edinburgh. With some like- 

 minded friends, Dr. Greville, Prof. Graham, theMacnabs, and H. 

 C.Watson, the Botanical Society of Edinburgh was founded in 

 1836 ; it has flourished since that time, and showed its seuse of the 

 loss sustained by the death of its founder, by adjourning the first 

 meeting fixed after the arrival of the news. In 1840 Balfour 

 began lecturing in Edinburgh, and his lectures were so well 

 received that his classes became thronged ; two years later, when 

 Sir William Hooker left Glasgow for Kew, the vacant chair was 

 filled by Balfour ; until in lS46, the death of his old teacher, 

 Graham, made an opening at Edinburgh, which Balfour filled, 

 henceforward abandoning the practice of metlicine. 



