FRANCIS BALFOUR 103 



afternoons during half a term in cutting into thin slices 



a small Amphioxus there was no automatic microscope 



then, and each section had to be mounted on a separate 



slide when really we should have been better employed 



in rowing or in playing football. It was a curious, and 



to me a still unexplained, result of Darwin's teaching 



that the younger men who at a very great distance 



followed his footsteps, followed them not in a direct 



line but at an angle, a morphological, an embryological, 



and an historical angle, an angle which, to use again an 



Americanism, anyway pointed more to the dead than 



the living. Professor Francis Balfour was about this 



time finishing his epoch-making work on Comparative 



Embryology. He was in a way the founder of a new 



science, and without doubt was the most attractive man 



I have ever met. He had to a peculiar degree that 



elusive and indefinable quality, charm, and he charmed 



us all. Educated humanity is ever turning this way 



and that, trying to explore the unknown, to read the 



riddle of our being. It will never be solved, and were it, 



what would be left ? In the early 'eighties comparative 



embryology seemed the most likely means of reaching 



some solution of this eternal problem, and in a minor 



way, under Balfour and his lieutenant Adam Sedgwick, 



we all became comparative embryologists. 



Newton, however, had but little interest in such 

 subjects ; not that he opposed them in any way ; indeed, 

 he promoted them by his personal influence, and by 

 lending his demonstrator to the acting Head of the 

 Morphological Laboratory. Although in some respects 

 old-fashioned and with fixed ideas, he was like Mr. 

 Crisparkle's mother, " always open to discussion," but 

 he invariably looked, as the China shepherdess looked, 

 as though he would like to see the discussion that would 

 change his mind. 



