OCCASIONAL, NOTES. $55 



The late Pkofessor Balfour. — The very sad fate of the late Francis 

 Maitland Balfour, M.A., F.R.S., who lost his life by a fatal slip on the 

 glacier of Fresney, above Courmayeur, in July last, is now widely known ; 

 and but for the fact that the intelligence only reached us when too late to be 

 noticed in our last uumber, we should ere this have joined in paying that 

 tribute of respect to his memory which has been so universally and so 

 deservedly accorded. The services which have been rendered to zoological 

 science by Mr. Balfour during his brief but brilliant career are too im- 

 portant to be passed over in silence in the pages of a journal which is 

 especially devoted to that branch of the science which is advanced by outdoor 

 work — the observation in the field of the habits of animals. We owe it, 

 therefore, to our readers to place before them some record, however brief 

 and imperfect, of his life and labours. Born in Haddingtonshire in 1852, 

 Mr. Balfour, at the time of his death, had but just attained the age of 

 thirty, and was thus cut off in the very prime of life, in the height of a 

 brilliant career, and while honours were being showered fast upon him. 

 Educated at Harrow, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he entered 

 in October, 1870, he early displayed that aptitude for original research, 

 which, happily directed by his friend and professor Dr. Michael Foster, led 

 him through a course of study resulting eventually in the publication of 

 several important memoirs. So early as 1873, iu which year he obtained 

 his B.A. degree, we find him contributing valuable papers on morphology 

 to the ' Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science,' and in that same year, 

 as one of the two representatives of the University of Cambridge, he pro- 

 ceeded with Mr. Dew-Smith to the zoological station at Naples, then recently 

 established. Here he worked assiduously in investigating the development 

 of the Elasmobrauch Fishes, the. results of which study were eventually 

 maturely considered and succinctly stated in his ' Monograph ' on that 

 subject, published in 1878, after being first foreshadowed in separate papers 

 in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1876, and in the 'Journal of 

 Anatomy and Physiology ' from 1876 to 1878. Of the value and importance 

 of this work, Dr. Michael Forster has observed, in the pages of our con- 

 temporary ' Nature,' that " from the very beginning to the very end of the 

 investigation, almost every step serves to throw light on important biological 

 problems. Every chapter from the first, which deals with the ovarian 

 ovum, to the last, which treats of the urogenital organs, contains a record of 

 inquiries which have left their stamp on morphological doctrines." His 

 elevation to a Natural Science Fellowship at Trinity College stimulated him 

 to further efforts, and he commenced to give lectures upon Animal Morpho- 

 logy, which were largely attended. Carrying on at the same time investi- 

 gations into various problems of morphology and embryology, he accumu- 

 lated material for his great work on ' Comparative Embryology,' which has 

 since been published, and translated into other languages, and has come to 



