ESSAY COMPETITIONS 299 



work, it is not amiss to recall the struggle at its inception lest 

 we forget. 



The system of Essays which formed so important a part of 

 Graham's teaching remained as prominent and was even developed 

 further in Balfour's course in a way which had the inestimable 

 merit of making the student feel that his study of plants had 

 a living relationship with the everyday concerns of life. Thus 

 when Simpson was engaged in his epoch-making investigations 

 on anaesthetics, the subject for an essay was the effect of 

 anaesthetics on sensitive plants, and by way of emphasis, the 

 prize awarded was a gift by Simpson himself Similarly Balfour 

 enlisted the sympathy of Messrs Lawson, the prominent agri- 

 cultural nurserymen of the day, and their prizes for dissection 

 of grasses, for kinds of cereals, and like subjects, were constant 

 reminders of the relations of botanical study to agriculture. 

 The subjects of essays covered a wide field. The titles 

 influence of narcotic and irritant gases, changes which have 

 taken place in the Flora of Britain during the historical era, 

 cytogenesis and cell development, phanerogamous embryology, 

 cryptogamous reproduction, teratology may serve to indicate 

 this, and an essential was always the practical illustration, 

 microscopic or other. 



For the use of the students Balfour compiled text-books 

 which, like his lectures, are comprehensive in the field they 

 cover, and encyclopaedic in the information they convey. His 

 facile pen found expression too in numberless articles in ency- 

 clopaedias and magazines, and his activity as an expositor of 

 botanical topics of the time was unbounded. 



In the Botanic Garden Balfour obtained the material for the 

 definite contributions he made to natural knowledge which are 

 in the domain of Systematic Botany. No work in which Balfour 

 engaged gave him more genuine pleasure than the administra- 

 tion of the Botanic Garden. Entering on the responsibility of 

 its care when its repute was high, he left it on laying down 

 office in even higher reputation, for in the McNabs William 

 and James father and son he had lieutenants of the first rank 

 in gardening. During his regime the equipment for laboratory 

 teaching to which reference has been made was installed, a 



