A SKETCH OF THE PROFESSORS OF 

 BOTANY IN EDINBURGH FROM 1670 

 UNTIL 1887 



By ISAAC BAYLEY BALFOUR 



Medicine and Botany James Sutherland enforced retirement the 

 Prestons Charles Alston his career John Hope Physiological 

 leanings Daniel Rutherford Robert Graham John Hutton Balfour 

 characteristics Botanic Society of Edinburgh founded appointed to 

 Glasgow transfer to Edinburgh his numerous activities laboratory 

 teaching established field excursions Ecology attitude to Darwinism 

 Alexander Dickson work in Organography his versatility. 



My task in the warring against oblivion typified in these 

 addresses is to speak about John Hutton Balfour of Edinburgh, 

 one of the botanical teachers of the middle of last century, 

 whose pupils were numbered by thousands, and whose active 

 life bridged the period of the passing of the old and the birth 

 of the new outlook upon science through Darwin's work ; and in 

 relation to what I have to say of him I propose to sketch briefly 

 the stages and development of botanical teaching in Edinburgh 

 from the date when systematised attention was first given to it. 



Of the well-recognised fact that the study of Botany as a 

 science has been, to begin with, dependent on Medicine my story 

 furnishes an excellent illustration. 



Only towards the end of the seventeenth century had the 

 advance in practice of Medicine in Edinburgh reached a stage 

 which gave urgency to a movement for the improvement in the 



