Balfour, John Hutton

(b. Edinburgh, Scotland, 15 September 1808; d. Edinburgh, 11 February 1884)

botany.

The eldest son of Andrew Balfour, an army surgeon who became a printer and publisher in Edinburgh, John Balfour received his basic education at the High School, Edinburch, and the universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews. He resisted his parents’ wishes that he enter the church, and chose medicine for his future career. He graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1832, and after a period of further study in a medical school in Paris, returned to his native city to practice medicine in 1834.

Like so many other physicians before him, Balfour found himself irresistibly drawn to botany. He first became seriously interested in the subject when he was about eighteen, and he was allowed to attend Robert Graham’s botanical lectures for four sessions. He was a founding member in 1836 of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and two years later he established the Edinburgh Botanical Club. In 1840 he enjoyed some success as a lecturer on botany in the extramural School of Medicine.

In 1841 Balfour abandoned medicine on succeeding Sir William J. Hooker as professor of botany at Glasgow University. His few years at Glasgow were not marked by any radical changes, although he arranged the removal of the botanic garden, which was becoming hemmed in by adjacent streets, to a new site at Kelvinside. Upon the death of Graham in 1845, he was elected to the chair of botany at Edinburgh and the associated posts of queen’s botanist in Scotland and Regiuskeeper ofthe Royal Botanic Garden. At Edinburgh, Balfour was fortunate in having as successive curators William and James McNab, father and son, and through their horticultural skill marked improvements were effected in the botanic garden: the grounds were enlarged from fourteen to forty-two acres, an arboretum was established, and a fine palm house and botanical museum were erected.

It is, however, as a teacher that Balfour is remembered. He made extensive use of the microscope in his demonstrations—not a common practice at that time—and placed great emphasis on the value of botanical excursions. These excursions had always been a characteristic feature of the teaching of botany in Scottish universities, and Balfour, like his predecessor Graham, used them for the dual purposes of instruction and supplying the botanical garden with specimens suitable for cultivation. Through these excursions he explored the greater part of Scotland inculcating in his students not only a knowledge of the flora but also an appreciation of ecological diversity. His manner of teaching, lucid and displaying an impressive wealth of detail, was distinguished by an enthusiasm that he communicated to his audience. A number of useful students textbooks, which went through numerous editions, came from his pen, including Manual of Botany (1849) and Class Book of Botany (1852).

His father had been a strict Presbyterian, and Balfour himself was a deeply religious man who sought in nature confirmation of God’s existence. Among his botanico-religious books were Phyto-Theology (1851), the title of which was changed to Botany and Religion in the third edition, Plants of the Bible (1857), and Lessons From Bible Plants (1870).

Balfour was an editor of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. That his original work should have been slight was the inevitable consequence of the time he devoted to teaching and administration. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1835, he was its secretary for many years; he also acquired the secretaryship of the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Socety and was dean of the Medical Faculty at Edinburgh for thirty years. He was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1844, and of the Royal Society in 1856 . On his retirement in 1879, the universities of Edinburgh, St. Andrews, and Glasgow each conferred on him the LL .D.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Among Balfour’s works are Manual of Botany (London, 1849); Phyto-Theology (Edinburgh, 1851); Class Book of Botany (Edinburgh, 1852); Outlines of Botany (Edinburgh, 1854); Plants of the Bible (London, 1857); Flora of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1863), written with J. Sadler;and Lessons From Bible Plants (Glasgow, 1870).

There is an article on Balfour by his son, Isaac, in F. W. Oliver, ed., Makers of British Botany (Cambridge, 1913), pp. 293-300.

R. G. C. Desmond