228 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 
1851. During his days of preparation for the university he 
was a good student, but did not exhibit in any marked way 
the powers for which later he became distinguished. At 
Cambridge, his distinguished teacher, the late Sir Michael 
Foster, recognized his great talents, and encouraged him to 
begin work in embryology. His labors in this field once 
begun, he threw himself into it with great intensity. He rose 
rapidly to a professorship in Cambridge, and so great was 
his enthusiasrn and earnestness as a lecturer that in seven 
years ‘‘ voluntary attendance on his classes advanced from 
ten to ninety.” He was also a stimulator of research, and at 
the time of his death there were twenty students engaged in 
his laboratory on problems of development. 
He was distinguished for personal attractiveness, and 
those who met him were impressed with his great sincerity, 
as well as his personal charm. He was welcomed as an 
addition to the select group of distinguished scientific men of 
England, and a great career was predicted for him. Huxley, 
when he felt the call, at a great personal sacrifice, to lay aside 
the more rigorous pursuits of scientific research, and to devote 
himself to molding science into the lives of the people, said 
of Balfour: “He is the only man who can carry cut my 
work.” 
His Tragic Fate.—But that was not destined to be. The 
story of his tragic end nced be only referred to. After com- 
pleting the prodigious labor on the Comparative Embry- 
ology he went to Switzerland for recuperation, and met his 
death, with that of his guide, by slipping from an Alpine 
height into a chasm. His death occurred in July, 1882. 
The memorial edition of his works fills four quarto vol- 
umes, but the ‘Comparative Embryology” is Balfour’s 
monument, and will give him enduring fame. It is not only 
a digest of the work of others, but contains also general 
considerations of a far-seeing quality. He saw develop- 
