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IV. The Distribution of Plants on tlie South Side of the Alps. By the late John Ball, 

 F.R.S., F.L.S. With an Introductory Note by AV. T. Thiselton Dier, C.M.G., 

 C.I.B., F.B.S., F.L.S. 



Kead 2nd May, 1895. 



The late Mr. John Ball, F.R.S , as is well knoAvn, devoted a considerable portion of a 

 very varied life to the minute study, both topographical and scientific, of the European 

 Alps. The results of the former were embodied in a ])ook, wliich, in its way, will, I 

 suppose, always remain a classic, the well-known * Alpine Guide.' Those of the latter 

 he never published in a comprehensive form, though he drew from time to time for 

 occasional papers upon the records which he had patiently accumulated for a period 

 of about thirty years. 



Mr. Ball died on October 21, 18<S9, somewhat unexpectedly, after a brief illness. 

 Some time afterwards his widow placed in my hands his botanical papers in the hope 

 that I might be able to extract from them something of permanent value which would 

 record his long and patient labours upon the Alpine flora. The task was no easy one, and 

 I think I should have shrunk from it without the encouragement of Mr. G. C. Churchill, 

 the best surviving authority in the country on the subject, and of Mr. J, G. Baker, E.ll.S., 

 the Keeper of the Kew Herbarium. As the result, I found that practically the whole of 

 Mr. Ball's work on the flora of the Alps is concentrated in the elaborate Table of the 

 Distribution of Plants on the South Side of the Alps which is now submitted to the 

 Society. 



The precise nature of the task which Mr, Ball set himself is described in a lecture 

 *' On the Origin of the Elora of the European Alps," which he delivered before the 

 Uoyal Geographical Society on June 9, 1879. It will be best given in his own 

 words: — 



" More than twenty years ago I began to tabulate the plants of the Alps, so as 

 to show the distribution of each species within the range of the Alps and on the other 

 mountains of Europe. As the southern side of the main chain has the richest and most 

 varied flora, and was at that time the less fully known, I divided it into fifty districts, and 

 set myself to collect materials from published works, from public and private herbaria, 

 and mainly from my own repeated visits — this part of my work involving, in fact, the 

 preparation of fifty local floras. Though I regard the work of botanical exploration as 

 vet far from complete, I in this way accumulated a great mass of materials, and 

 the question then arose as to what conclusions should be drawn from them." (Proc. R. 

 Geogr. Soc. 1879, p. 565.) 



It will be seen that what Mr. Ball accomplished, and, so far as it is possible to judge, 

 in a tolerably exhaustive manner, is to work out the detailed distribution of the Alpine 

 flora for fifty easily recognizable districts on the same principle as that adopted with such 



SECOND SERIES.— BOTANY, VOL. V. S 



