202 EDINBUEGH 



not lose sight of any you can beg, buy, borrow or steal 

 for me. 



I am always up at 6 and go to the garden at 7. At 9| 

 I go up to Graham's and breakfast and then down to the 

 garden again, where his Herb. is. I work at it the rest of 

 the day or when able go to Gregory's 1 lectures on Organic 

 Chemistry from 3-4 ; then return and dress for dinner and 

 call to see how Graham is. (I am rather heavily ironed 

 with Society here, and have not paid for one dinner since 

 my arrival even with a headache.) I generally get home 

 about 11 and cram for lectures like a dragon till 1 or 2 you 

 see I must dine out for two reasons, first because the good 

 people must know me before they elect me (do not say the 

 safest plan would be to stay at home !), and secondly because 

 I hear a great deal of excellent music in this town which is 

 irresistible. Balfour 2 is exerting himself to the utmost 

 with the townspeople and I should not wonder to see 

 him carry the chair : I assure you I shall be quite con- 

 tent to go back without the Professorship if I could only 

 see these unfortunate Grahams safe through their sea of 

 troubles. 



No wonder that by the end of June he says : 



I get very tired of it towards the end of the week. 

 Wednesday is my favourite day, as three lectures or the half 

 is over ; Thursday I get weary in, but the knowledge of 

 Friday being the last lifts me through that hour. 



1 William Gregory (1803-58) was the fifth in lineal descent of his family 

 to hold a professorship at Edinburgh, the first of mathematics, three of medicine, 

 William himself of chemistry. He was a pupil of Liebig, whose works he 

 edited in English, as well as publishing successful handbooks of his own on 

 Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. 



a John Hutton Balfour (1808-84) gradually gave up a successful medical 

 practice in Edinburgh in favour of botany, to which he had been devoted 

 since his student days under Graham, helping in 1836 to found the Edinburgh 

 Botanical Society, whose library and herbarium were eventually acquired by 

 the Crown as the basis of the collections at the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. 

 In 1842 he succeeded Sir W. Hooker at Glasgow, and three years later was 

 elected to the Edinburgh chair on the death of Graham, defeating J. D. Hooker. 

 This chair he held till 1879, writing successful text-books, developing the 

 Gardens and the museum, and proving himself an inspiring teacher. He not 

 only extended the field work already established, but was the pioneer in 

 Edinburgh of practical laboratory work with the microscope. But though 

 stimulating his pupils to consider the wider problems of botany, his religious 

 views led to his opposing the Darwinian movement. 



