Obituary Notices. 
1X1 
Edmund Chisholm Batten. 
(Read January 31, 1898.) 
During the past year (1897) the Royal Society of Edinburgh 
has lost one who took a lively interest in its welfare, and was, 
almost to the last, a constant attendant at its annual meetings. 
Mr Chisholm Batten, who was a J.P. for Inverness-shire, was 
born in 1817, at Kingston, near Yeovil, Somerset. 
He was the head boy of Sherborne School, and in 1834 proceeded 
to the University of Edinburgh. The Life and Letters of Principal 
J. D. Forbes (better known as Professor Eorbes, the celebrated 
Alpine traveller, and discoverer of the theory of glaciers) tells how 
the young English student was the favourite pupil and life-long 
friend of the young Scotch Professor of Natural Philosophy. 
Subsequently he was called to the English Bar, and The Gentle- 
man's Magazine for 1843 records : “ On August 1, at Windlesham, 
Edmund Batten, barrister-at-law, [was married] to Jemima, only 
sister of ‘The Chisholm. ’ ” On the Chisholm’s death, in 1858, 
this lady became the representative, the heiress-at-law, of the last 
three chiefs, her father and her two brothers. 
Edmund Batten then assumed the prefix of Chisholm, by Royal 
Licence, and from that time his annual visit to Scotland, kept up 
till 1896, was usually extended to the Highlands. 
Literary tastes seem to have been inherited with his manor of 
Thornfalcon in Somerset, for his ancestor, Robert Batten (whose 
estate at Pitminster was sold to buy that manor), is credited with 
having written, over the initials R. B., in the Spectator , to his 
friend Sir Richard Steele. 
He was an original and prominent member of the Somersetshire 
Archaeological and Natural History Society. He contributed to it 
almost annually a paper on biography or history, suggested by local 
architecture ; he thus gave interesting accounts of the foundation 
of various churches and schools in that part of England, which 
