The melancholy death of Professor Balfour,—a man of the most
well-marked genius,—whose Chair of Animal Morpho- logy at Cambridge was, we believe, almost constituted because he was the man who of all others would best fill it,—in an attempt to ascend the as yet unascended Aiguille Blanche, seems to have been due in no small degree to the state of the snow, and to the rashness which induced him to take but one guide, who perished with him. They fell over the precipice of the Peuteret, and the bodies were found lying, still connected by the rope, on the Fresuay glacier: The expedition was cer- tainly one of a kind so difficult, eqpecially in the actual state of the snow, that to take two guides would have been a very mild precaution, oven for so first-rate an Alpine climber as Professor Balfour. His death is a terrible loss to science, whereas the ascent of the Aiguille Blanche, oven if it had been accomplished successfully, would hardly have brought science any gain.
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