236 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



OBITUARY. 



Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, K.B.E., F.R.S. 



We record with the deepest regret the loss of Sir Isaac Bayley 

 Balfour. The announcement of his retirement from the strenuous 

 official duties he so ably and ungrudgingly performed as Pro- 

 fessor of Botany in the University and Regius Keeper of the 

 Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, was made in the last issue 

 of the Transactions (p. 116). The earnest hope then expressed 

 by the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society that he would 

 regain his health and enjoy many years of well-earned rest in 

 his southern home at Haslemere was, unfortunately, not to be 

 fulfilled. The strain of the past few years had been too great. 

 He continued to fulfil his many arduous duties — a too heavy 

 burden — up till last spring. If thought of self had ever in- 

 fluenced his actions, the Professor — as he was affectionately 

 called by his staff — might have secured that relaxation and ease 

 which advancing years demand, but such a thought was not 

 possible to Sir Isaac. Throughout a brilliant career the more 

 difficult the work and the more complex the problems he 

 encountered the keener arid more resolute became his deter- 

 mination to overcome them. 



Balfour was no ordinary scientist of the modern school ; he 

 was never lost in the entanglement of detail which modern 

 intensive specialisation tends to foster. He maintained a vision 

 broad and deep concerning fundamental problems, and his 

 wide knowledge of all that was best in the onward march of 

 progress during the past and present generations enabled him to 

 carry on his own work and to advise and assist others in a way 

 no authority among the later generation could emulate. 



Horticulture, Forestry, and Agriculture all owe a deep debt to 

 Sir Isaac, who, while never neglecting the purely scientific 

 aspects of Botany, was always enthusiastic in his endeavours to 

 apply knowledge from the vast storehouse of pure science to 

 improving the procedure and practice of these key or basic 

 industries. 



Born on the 31st of March 1853, he studied at Edinburgh 

 Academy and the Universities of Edinburgh, Strasbourg, and 

 Wurzburg. His father, John Hutton Balfour, occupied the 



