450 TRANSACTIONS AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE [Sess. lix. 



venerable pastor occupying Holyrood Free Manse ex- 

 claimed, " Who could not help being a naturalist in such 

 surroundings ? " So the boy Thomas Balfour caught the 

 family enthusiasm, and became a botanist, though he did 

 not appear as an attender of our meetings till late in life. 

 Other surroundings of his home affected him. He became 

 a zealous collector of insect.s, rare species of which used to 

 abound in the neighbouring hill, and doubtless scrambles 

 up its Cat's Nick, and like celebrated habitats, gave him 

 that taste for minerals wliich stuck to him through life, 

 the monument of which remains in his little work, " God's 

 Jewels." 



Dr. Thomas Balfour did not remove from the old 

 paternal home to George Square till about five years after 

 taking his degree of M.D., which he did in 1851, at the 

 time twenty-eight years of age, thus more matured than 

 brother graduates. Button's Chemical Laboratory, an out- 

 lying building to the family home, had not yet been taken 

 down, so a taste for chemistry was incited, as shown by his 

 graduation thesis on " Alcohol as an Etiological Agent," 

 which was commended, and a prospective career as lecturer 

 on Materia Medica. As it was, he spent three years of his 

 student course with Messrs. Duncan, Flockhart, & Co., an 

 experience which he found invaluable whilst writing out 

 physician prescriptions. This came also to be of service 

 when he succeeded Professor Fraser in 1874 as Curator 

 of the Museum of the Eoyal College of Physicians. Here 

 his knowledge of plants and minerals found ample scope. 

 Till the end he was zealous in keeping up to date this 

 great collection which the College purchased from Dr. 

 Martius, of Erlangen, " a unique one in this country, being 

 an almost complete collection of the 'Medicamina Simplicia' 

 of the Materia Medica as it stood at the time of its 

 purchase." The second brother, then the Eev. William 

 Balfour, imbibing Dr. Chalmers', his preceptor's, enthusiasm, 

 had devoted his life to working out Home Missions on 

 the territorial principle, and the young doctor thus began 

 that attendance on the forlorn inhabitants of Edinburgh's 

 wynds and closes which was his life habit. Besides, the 

 late Professor Pulteney Alison, his professor, became his 

 hecm ideal as a Christian physician. So it came about 



