.14 



NA TURE 



[August 3, 1882 



W. Clark) to give definite lectures upon animal morpho- 

 logy, at first in conjunction with Mr., now Prof. Milnes 

 Marshall, but after two terms, by himself. From that 

 time up to last Christmas his labours were enormous, 

 and his energy untiring. His class grew rapidly in 

 numbers ; he had to separate the students into an ele- 

 mentary and advanced division, each with separate 

 lectures, and courses of practical instruction ; and 

 though he soon gained the able assistance of Mr. 

 Adam Sedgwick and others as demonstrators, all his 

 pupils enjoyed the priceless advantages of close personal 

 contact with himself. At the same time he carried on, 

 either by himself, or through his pupils, a large number 

 of independent investigations into various problems of 

 embryology and morphology, and set himself to write 

 that great work on " Comparative Embryology," every 

 page, and indeed every line of which is marked at once 

 by the widest knowledge and the clearest insight, and 

 which will tell men in long years to come how great is 

 our loss to day. And all the while he was most active in 

 university and college matters ; every syndicate almost 

 was desirous to secure his services, and in the framing of 

 the new statutes of Trinity College he took among the 

 junior fellows a prominent part. 



During all these exertions his friends, and I not less 

 than any of them, watched him with anxious care. But 

 he was wise as well as zealous, and never went too faf ; 

 and when, the second volume of the big book being off 

 his hands, he started last Christmas for a holiday to 

 Messina, the prospects of his health seemed to me better 

 than ever. On his journey outward, he found one of his 

 pupils who had gone to study at Naples laid up with 

 typhoid fever at Capri, and with characteristic kind- 

 ness he halted to nurse the patient till friends could 

 arrive from England. On his return home, he himself 

 was struck down by an attack of the same fever, which 

 at first threatened to be severe, but happily proved other- 

 wise, and speedily left him ; and soon after there came 

 an event which was to him one of the greatest pleasures 

 of his short life. 



His fame was now spreading rapidly wherever science 

 reaches, and honours were coming thick upon him. In 

 1878 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 

 1881 was not only placed on the Council, but received the 

 high distinction of a Royal Medal. In the same year the 

 University of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of 

 LL.D., the British Association, at the York meeting, 

 chose him as one of the General Secretaries, in December 

 last a brilliant company assembled at Cambridge to greet 

 him as President of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 

 and while he was on his sick bed, the Committee of the 

 Athena:um elected him, as a distinguished man of science, 

 a Member of that Club. Moreover, other Universities 

 were eager, if possible, to win him for themselves. I 

 believe it is no secret that many efforts were made to 

 induce him to become the successor at Oxford of the 

 lamented Rolleston ; and it is certainly no secret that the 

 Government again and again pressed him to take the 

 chair of Natural History at Edinburgh. He, however, 

 remained faithful to his Alma Mater, and though, owing 

 to difficulties arising out of impending changes, his merit, 

 in spite of the esteem and pride with which all men at 

 Cambridge regarded him, remained without adequate re- 



cognition in his own University, he chose to remain with 

 us, waiting till the future should bring him his dues. 



Happily a special effort disclosed the fact that the diffi- 

 culties were, after all, not unsurmountable ; and at last, 

 this spring, with the approbation, I believe, of the whole 

 University, scientific or otherwise, and certainly to the 

 great joy of his friends, a special chair of Animal 

 Morphology was created for him, and he was placed in it. 



With this recognition of his worth, which he, I believe, 

 valued beyond even his weightier honours, with the 

 prospect of the increased facilities which the new statutes 

 would give in the coming session, and with his health 

 becoming rapidly restored (for since his fever he had 

 nursed himself, doing but little work, or what to him was 

 little), all the future seemed brighter than it had ever 

 seemed as yet. And when in early July I parted with 

 him, and heard him promise that on those perilous Alpine 

 tracks, he, remembering his past illness, would try nothing 

 rash or likely to strain his powers, I looked forward to 

 meeting him again, both of us perhaps fuller of hopes 

 and plans than we had ever been before. 



Of the details of his death, at the moment of writing, 

 we as yet know very little, save that some fatal slip on 

 the glacier of Fresney, above Courmayeur, hurried him 

 and his guide to an instantaneous death. 



And now comes the hardest part of my task. The 

 world of science knew Francis Balfour as an investigator 

 of the brightest promise, who, indeed, as a mere youth, 

 had already solved morphological problems which had 

 heretofore baffled the acutest minds, and of whom it 

 seemed difficult to say how far he might not reach. A 

 smaller circle in this country and in Europe knew him 

 also as a man whose firm will and rapid but clear judg- 

 ment were all the more effective, because his decisions 

 and resolves were made known to others with a winning 

 courtesy and with a kindly sensitive regard for the feelings 

 of those from whom he might differ in opinion. But only 

 those who had the privilege to be his friends knew his 

 real worth, for they alone were aware how much the light 

 of his personal character outshone even his scientific 

 achievements and his administrative powers. It will need 

 great knowledge and skill on the part of him who attempts 

 to show exactly how much science owes to Francis Balfour 

 as an inquirer, a teacher, and a counsellor; but that will 

 be an easy task compared with the effort to tell to those 

 who did not know him what he really was. Workers in 

 biology all the world over will feel that a light has gone 

 from the world when they hear the sad news that he is 

 dead, Cambridge men who have watched events at Cam- 

 bridge during the last ten years will know that a wholly 

 irreparable loss has fallen upon their University, but their 

 grief and their loss is a small thing put by the side of 

 the emptiness which is left for them whose daily life was 

 brightened by the light of his countenance. These mourn 

 for Lycidas, and cannot be comforted. 



M. Foster 



THE MOUNT WHITNEY EXPEDITION 



EXPERIMENTS at the Alleghany Observatory in 

 1879 and 1880, upon the selective absorption of 

 the solar rays by the earth's atmosphere, having made it 

 probable that the amount of heat the sun sends us (the 



