298 THE EDINBURGH PROFESSORS 



and extirpation ; factors of distribution and their influence ; 

 those and other problems of what we now term Ecological 

 Botany were themes on which the Professor discoursed in his 

 rambles, filling the pupil with information and forcing him to 

 think out to such conclusion as he might on the evidence before 

 him. And then the whole occasion was so enlivened by the out- 

 go of good humour and mirth in joke and pun and story, that 

 fatigue and weariness, which the physical exercise might evoke 

 in those less attuned than the wiry Professor, were drowned in 

 the sunny current of humanity. 



I mention this practical teaching first, for it was the charac- 

 teristic feature, but the idea of practical illustration pervaded 

 all Balfour's effort. His lecture table became a synopsis of the 

 lecture living plants, herbarium material, museum specimens, 

 all were pressed into service to elucidate the points of the dis- 

 course, whilst the walls were tapestried by diagrams. Never did 

 teacher more sedulously absorb the new for presentation to his 

 pupils. He was a lucid expositor, and, apart from his University 

 lectures, during many years was sought after for more popular 

 discourses to non-academic audiences. 



The period of Balfour's teaching included the momentous 

 year i860. The impulse of the new spirit introduced by Darwin 

 did not stimulate Balfour as it might have done a younger man. 

 His religious beliefs always in evidence were showing then 

 the influence of his early environment, and whilst Darwin's 

 work was incorporated in his teaching, the acceptance of 

 Darwin's theory appeared too near the negation of faith. On 

 Balfour indeed, as on others with like views, the immediate 

 effect of the Origin was the opposite of vivifying. It gave a 

 shock. And this, I conceive, not so much a consequence of 

 Darwin's own statement of his theory as of the forceful un- 

 compromising attitude of the chief protagonist of his cause. 

 Arrogance there was on the religious side, but no less also on 

 the scientific side in the discussion. Perhaps it was well that 

 the contest was sharp and bitter. It ended sooner, but its 

 course was strewn with misconceptions and with confusion of 

 cause and effect. In our days of complete reconciliation, when 

 every tyro lisps in phyletic numbers as the outcome of Darwin's 



