July 1S9.j.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDIXDUIJGH. 449 



Obituary Notice of Dr. Thomas Alexander Goldie 

 Balfouk, M.D., F.E.C.P.E., F.RS.E. By Andrew Taylok. 



The announcement that this loved physician had 

 suddenly succumbed on 10 th March, during the pheno- 

 menally severe weather of the early days of 1895, sent a 

 wave of sorrow through Edinburgh circles — medical and 

 seneral. The members of the Botanical Society, besides 

 his patients and members of his private circle of friends, 

 felt how one whose cheery presence, wit, and warm 

 sympathy did so much to enliven social intercourse was 

 now lost to them. 



St. John's Hill, Pleasance, where the subject of this 

 notice was born in 1825, was built by Hutton, the 

 geologist. Eeally situated in the Queen's Park, and till 

 those later years having all the surroundings of a mountain 

 home, far from the crowded city's ceaseless roar, it was in 

 the early decades of this century the home of a family of 

 naturalists. The fame of John Hutton Balfour, the eldest, 

 is European. If the exigencies of a crowded professional 

 life prevented the youngest from climbing to like heights 

 on the rung of the scientific ladder, the few papers by 

 Thomas A. G. Balfour in our " Transactions " show what 

 he might have done had he followed a strictly scientific 

 career. 



Though John Hutton Balfour removed to Dundas Street 

 in 1834, his influence was paramount at St. John's Plill. 

 The large section of garden ground, of the half acre now 

 so well cultivated by the venerable survivor of a happy 

 company of eleven, the Eev. Dr. William Balfour, specially 

 set apart for the growth of wild plants by the future 

 Queen's botanist, still remained. The herborisings first 

 begun by the father in the King's Park had extended, 

 under Professor Graham, into Sutherlandshire and like far 

 ofi" parts of Scotland, and the help of all the family group, 

 male or female, was called in for the nurture of such new 

 plant finds. Here, indeed, began our Botanical Society, 

 which was formed some two years after, and it was the 

 better of this private garden. Standing near the spot, and 

 pointing to the jagged outlines of Salisbury Crags, the 



TRANS. BOX. SOC. EDrS'. VOL. XX. 2 F 



