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Vol. IV. JULY, 1895. No. 7. 



VALENTINE BALL, 



C.B., I.I..D., F.R.S. 



Valentine Bali, was born in Dublin on the i4tli July, 1843, 

 and his busy and varied life ended in an everlasting rest on 

 the 15th of June, 1895. The second son of Robert Ball, LL.D., 

 for many years Secretarj^ of the Queen's University of Ireland 

 and Director of the Museum of Trinity College, Dublin, he 

 seemed in a great measure to have inherited his father's love 

 for Natural History. In one respect, however, there was a 

 marked difference between the father and the son ; Robert 

 Ball, though always willing to assist the student by a verbal 

 communication of the knowledge which he so largely pos- 

 sessed, was only with difficulty persuaded to put this know- 

 ledge into print, and his published writings are extremely 

 few ; Valentine Ball was an indefatigable note-taker and a 

 voluminous writer. Calling to mind that from the time that 

 he was fifteen years of age, until his untimely death, he was 

 occupied with a constant routine of official work, which 

 seldom gave much time for any leisure, it is amazing to think 

 of the numerous works and papers on Natural History, giving 

 the widest limits to that term, which appeared from his pen. 



Shortly after his father's death, in 1857, he entered Trinity 

 College, Dublin ; he passed his Degree examination in 1S64, 

 but he did not graduate until 1872, when at the Winter Com- 

 mencements of the University of Dublin, he took the B.A. 

 and M.A. degrees by accumulation. In the summer of 1864 

 he was appointed by Professor Oldham to the staff of the 

 Geological Survey of India, on which he continued until 1881. 

 This period of his life was full of labour, each season's work 

 was accomplished amid many disadvantages. In his "Jungle 

 Life in India" published in 1880, he gives an account of his 

 often very arduous occupations on the Survey, sometimes in 



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