December 16, 1922] 



NA TURE 



817 



the thanks of English and American students, who owe 

 him besides a debt for his share in the foundation of the 

 Annals of Botany ; from the outset he served as one of 

 the editors of this successful and important journal. 



It was, however, the work accomplished by him 

 as a teacher for a generation at Edinburgh that led 

 Balfour to be regarded, with justice, as one of the fore- 

 most of British botanists. His personal charm enabled 

 him to arrest the attention of his students ; the lucidity 

 of his discourse ensured the maintenance of that atten- 

 tion.- But the reality of his success depended neither 

 upon these natural accidents nor upon the variety and 

 the precision of the knowledge which informed his 

 teaching. It is to be accounted for rather by the wide 

 sympathy which enabled him, as one who was at once 

 an erudite natural historian and an accomplished experi- 

 mental biologist, to combine all that was valuable in 

 the older training to which he had been subjected in 

 this country and in the newer methods which he had 

 mastered abroad. To a still greater degree, perhaps, 

 he owed his success to that sane outlook which enabled 

 him to induce those he taught to regard botanical 

 investigation and research, in the field, the cabinet, and 

 the laboratory alike, as means to an end rather than as 

 ends in themselves. 



Balfour's work as Regius Keeper and as King's 

 Botanist was actuated by the same philosophy. His 

 study of the natural history of the plants under his 

 care, while complying with the highest standard set in 

 ecological and in systematic work, was undertaken with 

 the object of mastering their cultural requirements. 

 The success of his results in the technical field was 

 largely due to the thoroughness of his scientific study. 



The long-sustained and critical investigation of the 

 members of the two. great genera, Primula and Rhodo- 

 dendron, to which of late years Balfour devoted much 

 of his scanty leisure, has given his name a permanent 

 place in the annals of systematic study. The com- 

 plexity of the problems he has had to face might 

 almost justify a suspicion that in Balfour's case the 

 difficulty- of a subject was an added incentive to its 

 study. However this may be, the fact remains that 

 these arduous labours, though incidentally of extreme 

 taxonomic value, have had as their primary purpose 

 the rendering of assistance to horticulture in dealing 

 with the accessions of new plant-forms during the past 

 two decades from south-western China and the north- 

 eastern Himalaya. It is because the object of his 

 studies was the provision of technical help to the 

 gardener, and not in spite of that fact, that the results 

 attained are of such benefit to students of plant- 

 distribution and plant-association. 



Among the extra - official duties undertaken by 

 Balfour were included willing services rendered to 

 the Edinburgh Botanical Society, the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh, and the Royal Horticultural Society. 

 Elected to the Linnean Society in 1875, ne served on the 

 Council during 1884-85 ; elected to the Royal Society 

 in 1884, he served on the Council during 1892-94. In 

 1894 he was president of the biology section of the British 

 Association at the Oxford meeting, and in 1901 was 

 president of the botany section at the Glasgow meeting. 

 An invitation to serve as president of the Linnean 

 Society, in succession to Prof. Poulton, in 1916 was 

 declined, and the intimation that his health was such 



NO. 2772, VOL. I IO] 



as to preclude acceptance was one of the earliest to 

 cau-c his friends disquietude. 



In 1920 Balfour was created a K.B.E. in recognition 

 of the great public services rendered by him during the 

 war, his devotion to which had undermined his con- 

 stitution. Among other honours bestowed on Balfour 

 were the Victoria Medal of Honour of the Royal Horti- 

 cultural Society, received in 1897, and the Linnean 

 Medal — the highest honour the Linnean Society could 

 offer — received in 1919. The wish then expressed by 

 the latter society that Balfour " might long be spared 

 to continue the work that has served its members as an 

 example and an encouragement " has unfortunately 

 not been fulfilled. By his death, which took place 

 at Court Hill, Haslemere, on November 30 last, 

 botanical science has lost a brilliant votary ; his 

 friends have lost one whose soundness of judgment 

 was only equalled by his ready kindness and unfailing 

 courtesy. 



Sir Norman Moore, Bt., M.D. 



The medical profession is poorer by the death of Sir 

 Norman Moore on November 30. Born in Manchester 

 seventy-five years ago, he rose without influence and 

 solely by his own exertions to be president of the Royal 

 College of Physicians. He also earned a well-deserved 

 reputation as an historian of British medicine. After 

 a preliminary education at Owens College, he matri- 

 culated in the University of Cambridge from St. 

 Catherine's College, whence in due course he graduated 

 in arts and medicine, being afterwards elected an 

 honorary fellow. He entered St. Bartholomew's 

 Hospital in 1879 and remained in close association with 

 it during the whole of the rest of his life. He served 

 first as lecturer on comparative anatomy, later as 

 demonstrator of morbid anatomy, and in due season as 

 lecturer on medicine in the medical school, while in 

 the hospital he filled in succession all the offices from 

 house physician to consulting physician. He also acted 

 for many years as dean of the school and warden of the 

 college, living within the precincts of the hospital, and 

 serving so zealously that for many years the annual 

 entry of students exceeded that of any of the other 

 hospitals in London. 



During his years of residence in St. Bartholomew's 

 Hospital, Moore laid the foundations of his renown as an 

 historian of medicine. He wrote as many as 454 articles, 

 dealing chiefly with the lives of medical men. for the 

 " Dictionary of National Biography." He was instru- 

 mental in obtaining for the Royal College of Physicians 

 the endowment of the FitzPatrick lectures, and himself 

 gave two courses of the lectures, one on " John Mirfield 

 and Medical Study in London during the Middle Ages," 

 the other on " The History of the Study of Clinical 

 Medicine in the British Isles." His knowledge of the 

 subject and his work in connexion with it made him 

 a worthy successor to Sir William Osier as president of 

 the history section at the Royal Society of Medicine. 

 More than thirty years of such time as he could spare 

 from his other duties were devoted to the preparation 

 of a history of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. The work 

 was delayed by the war, but it appeared in two well- 

 illustrated quarto volumes in 1918, and immediately 

 became a classic. 



The age and traditions of the Royal College of 



