426 MISCELLANEA. [1881. 



[The following extracts referring to the late Francis Mait- 

 land Balfour,* show my father's estimate of his work and 

 intellectual qualities, but they give merely an indication of 

 his strong appreciation of Balfour's most lovable personal 

 character : 



From a letter to Fritz Miiller, January 5, 1882 : 

 "Your appreciation of Balfour's book [' Comparative Em- 

 bryology'] has pleased me excessively, for though I could not 

 properly judge of it, yet it seemed to me one of the most 

 remarkable books which have been published for some con- 

 siderable time. He is quite a young man, and if he keeps 

 his health, will do splendid work. . . . He has a fair fortune 

 of his own, so that he can give up his whole time to Biology. 

 He is very modest, and very pleasant, and often visits here 

 and we like him very much." 



From a letter to Dr. Dohrn, February 13, 1882 : 



" I have got one very bad piece of news to tell you, that 



F. Balfour is very ill at Cambridge with typhoid fever 



I hope that he is not in a very dangerous state ; but the 

 fever is severe. Good Heavens, what a loss he would be to 

 Science, and to his many loving friends ! "] 



C. Darwin to T. H. Huxley. 



Down, January 12, 1882. 



MY DEAR HUXLEY, Very many thanks for ' Science and 

 Culture/ and I am sure that I shall read most of the essays 

 with much interest. With respect to Automatism,! I wish 

 that you could review yourself in the old, and of course for- 

 gotten, trenchant style, and then you would here answer 

 yourself with equal incisiveness ; and thus, by Jove, you 



* Professor of Animal Morphology at Cambridge. He was born in 

 1851, and was killed, with his guide, on the Aiguille Blanche, near Cour- 

 mayeur, in July, 1882. 



f "On the hypothesis that animals are automata and its history," an 

 Address given at the Belfast meeting of the British Association, 1874, and 

 published in the ' Fortnightly Review,' 1874, and in ' Science and Culture.' 



