192 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Sess. Lxxxvn 



difficult to fill, for the school of Scottish Field Naturalists 

 to which he belonged is fast disappearing. He was among the 

 last, but his name will always be remembered among the most 

 eminent. J. R. Matthews. 



Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour. 



"We have to deplore the loss of our most distinguished 

 member, the ornament of our Society, the one who has done 

 most for it. He was never out with its circle. His father. 

 Professor John Hutton Balfour, was one of the founders of the 

 Society, and the son became a member at the age of nineteen, 

 in IMay 1872. But his association with it was earlier than that 

 date. His trend to botany was evinced in his boyhood, and 

 his acquaintance with botany and with botanists was in- 

 evitable in his environment. The year of admission to the 

 Society was that of his first contributions to its Transactions. 

 He read in 1872 two papers : " Notice of New Localities for 

 Plants near Edinburgh," and " Localities for Plants near 

 Edinburgh." At first hand from his father he had the 

 history of the early days of the Society and of the interesting 

 circle of scientists who laid so well its foundations. In losing 

 him we feel we have lost the last link which connects us with 

 the inception of our Society, which is now rapidly nearing 

 its centenary. 



While thus mourning one who loomed so large in the annals 

 of our own Society we have as botanists, as horticulturists, as 

 arboriculturists to lament the passing of one who made a 

 great figure in the wide field outside our own special activities 

 as a Society. I do not propose to enumerate his works nor 

 to sketch his career. With the broad outlines of these we are 

 all more or less familiar. Apprecia.tions more or less detailed 

 have already appeared in scientific and other journals. What 

 I thought more in keeping with this occasion, had time 

 y)ermitted, was to elicit from our members their own recollec- 

 tions, their own impressions, their own opinions of what he 

 represented to them. 



As in the old saying^ — the child was father of the man. 

 Genius, according to some, is the capacity for taking pains. 

 When inclined to nod assent to such a facile generalisation 



