22 BOTANICAL EXCURSIONS MADE BY 
sketch of the Calendarium Flore of Edinburgh,’* which shows 
that Hope took special interest in the flora of Edinburgh and its 
vicinity. James Mackay and George Don, who were Superin- 
tendents of the Royal Botanic Garden, during Professor 
Rutherford’s tenure of the Chair, were noted field-botanists. 
There are yet alive those who can tell of the enthusiasm of 
Professor Graham in the excursions he made all over Scotland,* 
and yet more who will remember a like enthusiasm tn his 
successor, Professor John Hutton Balfour. Both these professors 
and Keepers of the Royal Botanic Garden made their excursions 
serve the double purpose of giving instruction to their pupils 
and of supplying the Botanic Garden with specimens for 
cultivation, and to their efforts in the latter direction the Garden 
owes its early and sustained reputation for its collection of 
herbaceous and alpine plants. 
Professor John Hutton Balfour kept a record of the excursions 
he made with pupils, and extracts from these appeared from time 
to time in the Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh 
and elsewhere, giving a brief resumé of incidents of the 
excursions, and the names of some of the plants collected. At 
his death his “ Excursion Diaries” passed into the hands of his 
eldest daughter, now Mrs. Cleland, wife of the Professor of 
Anatomy in the University of Glasgow. Mrs. Cleland has lent 
to me these records and I have found them to be of great service 
in connection with the excursions which are still made through- 
out the year with students of botany in Edinburgh. As I think 
the records will have interest for many students of botany now 
and in the future, extracts from them are here published in these 
“ Notes of the Royal Botanic Garden.” 
What is given are those portions of the “Excursion Diary” 
which deal with the excursions made with botanical students 
from the years 1846 to 1878 inclusively—the years during which 
Professor John Hutton Balfour was Keeper of the Royal Botanic 
Garden and occupied the Chair of Botany in the University of 
of this was printed in ‘‘The Annals of Scottish Natural 
faa July and October 1900, and January 1901. 
+ See, for an account of an excursion with Professor Graham, Spencer 
Thomson, “ Wanderings among the Wild Flowers,” London, 1854, 
p. 127, 
