DUBLIN NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 147 



Friday, the 17th instant. The cause need scarcely be stated, so general 

 throughout Dublin has been the shock felt at the sudden decease of Dr. 

 Robert Ball, Director of the University Museum, and President of a So- 

 ciety kindred to our own. Of my private feelings on this occasion I 

 will not speak. Every one knows how intimately we have been con- 

 nected together for a very long time. Our friendship commenced two and 

 thirty years ago, when I was a schoolboy, and closes, leaving me a gray- 

 haired man ; and throughout the whole of that period we have had nei- 

 ther quarrel, nor jealousy, nor severance of feeling any kind. I always 

 found him the same — lull of zoological information, most ready to 

 impart it, and taking special pleasure in seeing other students of nature 

 entering the field which he had so well trodden. I well remember how 

 proud I was, as a boy, to find myself on terms of intimacy with a grown 

 man who was so fully informed on the subjects which were mysteries 

 to me. My favourite pursuit at that time was the Mollusca (I had not 

 then commenced Botany), and during a summer spent at Youghal I pro- 

 fited largely from Dr. Ball's experience of the localities, and intimate 

 knowledge of the habits of the animals we were seeking for. 



It is not in Dublin that I need speak of Dr. Ball's subsequent ca- 

 reer. There is no scientific body in this city with which he was not 

 more or less connected or identified ; and the high position to which he 

 had just been named, as President to Section D in the coming Meeting 

 of the British Association, shows the esteem in which he was held by 

 those best competent to form an estimate of his character. It is said you 

 may know a man's character by his friends. Who were Robert Ball's 

 most intimate friends in his own particular branch of study? Forbes, 

 Thompson, Yarrell, Owen, Bell, Johnston, Allman, Patterson — names 

 well known to you all, and some of them of world-wide celebrity ;' and 

 I might add to these almost every zoologist of note in this country, and 

 England, and many of the brightest ornaments of zoological science in 

 the continents of Europe and America. How the blank which has been 

 left by his death can be filled up, I know not. He has fallen in the very 

 prime of his age, and in the full career of his usefulness, and there is 

 no one equally qualified as he was to fill the many duties to which his 

 time was devoted. As Secretary of the Eoyal Zoological Society in par- 

 ticular, his loss will be keenly felt, for it is not too much to say that it was 

 by his exertions mainly — I may almost say wholly — that the Zoological 

 Society was kept alive during the long period of national distress, and 

 to him, in a great measure, is to be attributed its present prosperous 

 condition. It was his favourite care — for he saw in it a great popular 

 instructor — an engine for diffusing a knowledge of animals, their forms 

 and habits, among the masses of the people. That it has largely an- 

 swered this purpose, so far as the very limited funds at its disposal have 

 allowed, will readily be granted; and those who have sat long on its Coun- 

 cil will agree with me that without Dr. Ball's constant and unremitting 

 oversight, that end could not have been attained. His ingenuity was 

 great ; he was constantly devising ingenious contrivances for insuring 

 either the comfort or the better exhibition of the animals under his care ; 



