Balfour John Hutton

Balfour, John Hutton, born in Edinburgh in 1808, and connected by descent with the author of the Huttonian Theory, received his education at the High School, and at the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrew's. Destined at first for the Church, he was attracted to the study of medicine, and won the highest distinctions in that faculty, becoming a Fellow of the College of Surgeons and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh before he was seven-and-twenty. From Dr. Graham he acquired a taste for botany, and in 1841 succeeded Sir W. Hooker as professor of the science at Glasgow, ultimately occupying the same chair at Edinburgh, with the posts of Keeper of the Botanical Gardens and Queen's Botanist for Scotland. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1856. A very able lecturer, Dr. Balfour was no less successful as a scientific writer. His Class-Book of Botany, Outlines of Botany, Phyto-Theology, Plants of Scripture, and Elementary Botany are still in use. He died in 1884.