ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL ASSOCIATION. 17 



tally particularly well suited for the work; and though banishment 

 from the many friends I possess would be most painful, yet the high 

 nature of the service to be attempted would console me." 



The intervening years from 1834 to 1840 were eventful and impor- 

 tant both in his social and scientific career. On the 12th January, 1835, 

 his friend "William Thompson, Esq., of Belfast, wrote to him in the fol- 

 lowing terms : — " As you have not at present sufficient leisure to impart 

 (in print) your accumulated knowledge of the Natural History of this 

 country, I mean to forward for publication all you communicate to me, 

 in your own name, and mark it off with inverted commas as your pro- 

 duction, doing, at the same time, as I would be done by, in correcting 

 any verbal matters that in your haste did not claim a second thought." 

 Such was the simple commencement of that correspondence which did 

 so much to elucidate the Fauna of Ireland, and has preserved hundreds 

 of observations made by Dr. Ball, which would otherwise, in all proba- 

 bility, have perished with him. 



It was in this year, 1835, that I first became acquainted with Ball. 

 I was introduced to him by a note from Thompson, which now lies 

 before me. Prom this period until his untimely death our correspon- 

 dence continued, progressing from the topics which belong to literature 

 and science, until it included those whose province is the domestic 

 hearth, and which flourish only in the atmosphere of a happy home. 



In the early part of this spring he became a member of the Royal 

 Irish Academy, and was elected on the Council of the Zoological So- 

 ciety. He paid a visit, with Mr. Thompson, to Ireland's Eye, and 

 mentions that he got " one hundred and fifty specimens of plants, and 

 upwards of fifty species of alga?." He speaks in high terms — which all 

 who have used it can corroborate— of a varnish specially adapted for 

 natural history specimens, and a mode of preserving fish " which really 

 is superlative." In that summer the British Association for Science 

 held its meeting in Dublin. Ball took, of course, an active part in what 

 was going on : — in the business of the Natural History Section; in the 

 arrangements at the Zoological Gardens for the visit of the Association; 

 and in acts of attention and hospitality to many of its members, with 

 whom he then formed a personal acquaintance. At this meeting he was 

 requested to investigate the mode in which the Echinus lividm exca- 

 vates the rocks on which it is found. 



ZOOL. A HOT. SOC. PROC. VOL. I. I) 



