JOHN BALL, F.E.S. 867 



have worked at the exploration of the Alps with astonishing 

 assiduity : and I find it difficult to account for the time which he 

 must have devoted at the busiest part of his life to their minute 

 topographical examination. Alpine travel forty years ago was 

 almost inconceivably different from what it is now. The best 

 maps were inaccurate ; means of locomotion were of the roughest, 

 and inns there were none. I find that Ball was at Zermatt in 

 1845 ; its very existence was then almost unknown to civilized 

 Europe. He has often told me that there was no lodging to be 

 had, except at the doctor's, and this consisted of but three com- 

 municating rooms. On this, or some other occasion, he wag 

 occupied in the outer of the series after a hard day's collecting, 

 when his door was thrown open to admit Boissier, with Madame 

 de Gasparin and her sister, who had no other means of access to 

 their own rooms beyond. 



The results of Ball's alpine work were published in the well- 

 known 'Alpine Guide' (1860-65). Guide-books are so often mere 

 compilations, that the production of one may seem to many no 

 gi'eat feat. But Ball's book was in truth an essentially original 

 investigation, in which all the resources of an accomplished 

 naturalist were brought to bear upon a problem in scientific 

 topography. The reputation of the book gains rather than 

 diminishes by time. I cannot do better than quote from the 

 most recent historian of Swiss travel, Mr. W. A. B. Coolidge, the 

 following opinion of its merits : — " Speaking for myself, I may say 

 that I have had twenty years' experience of this guide-book in 

 those parts of the Alps least known even to Mr. Ball : and I wish 

 to place on record my profound admiration of the amazing success 

 with which the author has firmly grasped the main lines of the 

 topography of the most unfrequented districts ; so that all his 

 followers have had to do is to fill in the outline sketched by so masterly 

 a hand. While Mr. Ball devotes his book in the first instance to 

 climbing pure and simple, he is ever on the look-out for the 

 geological and botanical phenomena of each district." 



There is a curious story which illustrates the minuteness of 

 of Ball's topographical knowledge. In 1866 the Italians were 

 baffled in an attack on one of the Austrian forts in the Trientino. 

 Ball, whose sympathies were always deeply Italian, furnished the 

 Italian staff with a plan of campaign, which was acted upon with 

 immediate success, and for which he received the warm thanks of 

 the Italian War Office. 



About 1859 I find Ball writing to Sir W. Hooker: — "I am 

 w orking at a book in which 1 want to put the results of many years' 

 wanderings — the title to be something like * The Mountains of 

 Central and Southern Europe, and their Vegetation.' " The 

 preparation of the ' Alpine Guide ' seems to have superseded this 

 project. But Ball never ceased to work at the distribution of 

 alpine plants, and some of the results of his studies are given in the 

 lecture, already referred to, **0n the Origin of the Flora of the 

 European Alps " (1879). In this he tells us : — " More than twenty 

 years ago I began to tabulate the plants of the Alps, so as to show 



