The aim and result of the excursion were not solely the acquisition of plants and their identification. The stimulating effect on many of this side of Botany is evidenced even in our day by the zeal with which search after rare plants is pursued, and in the eagerness displayed in the race after micro-forms. But the enticement of acquisition and discovery of novelty whilst there were not the governing influences in Balfour's excursion. In touch as he was with the problems of organography in its fullest sense, a man of wide reading familiar with the botanical work of his time, and associated as he had been in the field with men like Edward Forbes and Hewett Cottrell Watson, Balfour could and did look at plants from the standpoint of their place in vegetation, and in relation to the conditions of growth, and as having a history in their habitat. His teaching reflected this. It was never classification, diagnosis, and nomenclature as the end-all of Botany. The details emphasised changed as the progress of botanical discovery gave new clues to explanation of form and relation, and it was the solvings and attempts at solvings of observed phenomena that gave that fascination to his excursions, the remembrance of which seems to have clung to those who had the fortune to join them. The succession of plants and plant-form from base to summit of a highland hill; contrasts of vegetation of stream-course, mountain pasture, alpine rock; high mountain forms of shore plants; intrusion and extirpation; factors of distribution and their influence;--those and other problems of what we now term Ecological Botany were themes on which the Professor discoursed in his rambles, filling the pupil with information and forcing him to think out to such conclusion as he might on the evidence before him. And then the whole occasion was so enlivened by the outgo of good humour and mirth in joke and pun and story, that fatigue and weariness, which the physical exercise might evoke in those less attuned than the wiry Professor, were drowned in the sunny current of humanity. I mention this practical teaching first, for it was the characteristic feature, but the idea of practical illustration pervaded all Balfour's effort. His lecture table became a synopsis of the lecture--living plants, herbarium material, museum specimens, all were pressed into service to elucidate the points of the discourse, whilst the walls were tapestried by diagrams. Never did teacher more sedulously absorb the new for presentation to his pupils. He was a lucid expositor, and, apart from his University lectures, during many years was sought after for more popular discourses to non-academic audiences.