INTRODUCTION. 1 1 



On his return to Cambridge, he still continued working on 

 the Elasmobranchs, receiving material partly from Naples, 

 partly from the Brighton Aquarium, the then director of which, 

 Mr Henry Lee, spared no pains to provide him both with embryo 

 and adult fishes. While at Naples, he communicated to the 

 Philosophical Society at Cambridge a remarkable paper on 

 "The Early Stages of Vertebrates," which was published in 

 full in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, July, 

 1875; he also sent me a paper on "The Development of 

 the Spinal Nerves", which I communicated to the Royal 

 Society, and which was subsequently published in the Phi- 

 losophical Transactions of 1876. He further wrote in the course 

 of the summer and published in the Journal of Anatomy and 

 Physiology \\\ October, 1875, a detailed account of his "Obser- 

 vations and Views on the Development of the Urogenital 

 Organs." 



Some time in August of the same year he started in 

 company with Mr Arthur Evans and Mr J. F. Bullar for a 

 second trip to Finland, the travellers on this occasion making 

 their way into regions very seldom visited, and having to 

 subsist largely on the preserved provisions which they carried 

 with them, and on the produce of their rods and guns. From 

 a rough diary which Balfour kept during this trip it would 

 appear that while enjoying heartily the fun of the rough tra- 

 velling, he occupied himself continually with observations on 

 the geology and physical phenomena of the country, as well 

 as on the manners, antiquities, and even language of the 

 people. It was one of his characteristic traits, a mark of the 

 truly scientific bent of his mind, of his having, as Dohrn soon 

 after Balfour's first arrival at Naples said, ' a real scientific 

 head,' that every thing around him wherever he was, incited 

 him to careful exact observation, and stimulated him to 

 thought. 



In the early part of the Long Vacation of the same year 

 he had made his first essay, in lecturing, having given a short 

 course on Embryology in a room at the New Museums, 

 which I then occupied as a laboratory. Though he afterwards 

 learnt to lecture with great clearness he was not by nature 

 a fluent speaker, and on this occasion he was exceedingly 



