Identifier: transactionsproc2728bota (find matches)
Title: Transactions and proceedings of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh
Year: 1891 (1890s)
Authors: Botanical Society of Edinburgh
Subjects: Plants Plants
Publisher: (Edinburgh) : The Society
Contributing Library: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden
Digitizing Sponsor: The LuEsther T Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
s. In losinghim we feel we have lost the last link which connects us withthe inception of our Society, which is now rapidly nearingits centenary. While thus mourning one who loomed so large in the annalsof our own Society we have as botanists, as horticulturists, asarboriculturists to lament the passing of one who made agreat figure in the wide field outside our own special activitiesas a Society. I do not propose to enumerate his works norto sketch his career. With the broad outlines of these we areall more or less familiar. Apprecia.tions more or less detailedhave already appeared in scientific and other journals. WhatI thought more in keeping with this occasion, had timey)ermitted, was to elicit from our members their own recollec-tions, their own impressions, their own opinions of what herepresented to them. As in the old saying^—the child was father of the man.Genius, according to some, is the capacity for taking pains.When inclined to nod assent to such a facile generalisation
Text Appearing After Image:
Plioto hii) Professor Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour. )922-23.) BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 193 we are faced with exceptions which raise the question afresh.Here we have the record of a youth scarcely out of his teens,an Arts Graduate, a Science Graduate, a Vans Dunlop scholar,a member of the Transit of Venus Expedition, a medicalstudent who during his fathers illness conducts the BotanicalClasses with entire responsibility, and is never put out of hisstride, graduates in Medicine in due course, without haste,without rest, and far did he travel. Such a one comes almostfully panoplied—no mere gift of taking pains. I do not knowthat he was addicted to taking pains in the narrow sense,his mind was a solvent of power with keen insight and drivingforce. He was gifted with a sound constitution. I confess Iknew him not in his prime, not till the middle forties. Butan excursion to a Highland Ben with Balfour in the closingyears of last century was a thing to be remembered. Likehis brother bota

Note About Images