A SKETCH OF THE PROFESSORS OF BOTANY IN EDINBURGH FROM 1670 UNTIL 1887
Medicine and Botany—James Sutherland—enforced retirement—the Prestons—Charles Alston—his career—John Hope—Physiological leanings—Daniel Rutherford—Robert Graham—John Hutton Balfour—characteristics—Botanic Society of Edinburgh founded—appointed to Glasgow—transfer to Edinburgh—his numerous activities—laboratory teaching—established field excursions—Ecology—attitude to Darwinism—Alexander Dickson—work in Organography—his versatility.
My task in the warring against oblivion typified in these addresses is to speak about John Hutton Balfour of Edinburgh, one of the botanical teachers of the middle of last century, whose pupils were numbered by thousands, and whose active life bridged the period of the passing of the old and the birth of the new outlook upon science through Darwin's work; and in relation to what I have to say of him I propose to sketch briefly the stages and development of botanical teaching in Edinburgh from the date when systematised attention was first given to it.
Of the well-recognised fact that the study of Botany as a science has been, to begin with, dependent on Medicine my story furnishes an excellent illustration.
Only towards the end of the seventeenth century had the advance in practice of Medicine in Edinburgh reached a stage which gave urgency to a movement for the improvement in the
