JOHN BALL, F.R.S. 365 



appeared from Loch of Park, and nearly from the cliffs south of 

 Aberdeen, in both of which localities it was formerly plentiful. 

 Fern-collectors are mainly responsible (J. W. H. ,T.). 



1809. BotrycMum Lunaria, Sw. Formerly very local in the 

 Pentlands ; now extirpated (G. A. P.). 



1818. Equisetum hyeviale, L. Extinct in Mid- Aberdeen (J. M.). 



JOHN BALL, F.R.S. 



To give in a short space an adequate account of a long and 

 varied life is never an easy task. And in my own case it is not 

 made easier by the fact that my own personal acquaintance with 

 Mr. Ball only dates back some fifteen years. Yet I would not 

 willingly relinquish to another hand the task imposed on me by the 

 Editor of putting together such facts as I have been able to collect 

 in memory of one whom I shall ever regard as the most gentle, 

 kind, and sympathetic of men. 



John Ball was the eldest son of the Rt. Hon. Nicholas Ball, 

 sometime M.P. for Clonmel, Attorney-General for Ireland, and 

 afterwards a Judge of the Irish Court of Common Pleas. He was 

 born in Dabhn on August 20th, 1818, and was educated at Oscott, 

 from whence he proceeded to Christ's College, Cambridge. His 

 name appears in the list of wranglers in the mathematical tripos 

 for 1839, but, being a Roman Catholic, he was then miable to take 

 a degree. Christ's College is memorable to botanists as the place 

 where Darwin and Berkeley also received their University education. 

 In later years its botanical traditions have been renewed in Vines 

 and Marshall Ward; and Francis Darwin, though educated at 

 Trinity, is now one of the Fellows. The elder Darwin went to Cam- 

 bridge in 1828, and was therefore in a University sense a good deal 

 senior to Ball. I am not sure that, in after life, the two men ever 

 even met, though in disposition and pursuits there was so much 

 that would have seemed almost destined to draw them together. 



But, like Darwin, Ball owed the bent which he received for 

 scientific studies to Henslow. That there was something almost 

 akin to genius in the skill with which this remarkable teacher 

 picked out the right men, and in the fascination which he exercised 

 over them, I can hardly doubt. For we know, from Darwin's life, 

 that it was effected not by academic teaching in the lecture-room, 

 though that was clear and excellent, but by personal contact in 

 excursions about Cambridge, in which the charm of every aspect of 

 field Natural History was brought to bear upon delighted pupils. 

 Cambridge to this day retains not a little of this tradition of direct 

 personal mfluence. But it must have been strong in Henslow's 

 hands if it rescued Darwin from being an " idle sporting man," and 

 sobered the "wild Irishman" which those still living remember in 

 Ball. He must, however, have had some previous scientific 

 proclivities, as he accompanied Prof. Babington to the West of 

 Ireland in 1835, an expedition of which the latter has given an 



