12 . THE BIRDS OF ESSEX. 



detail. He was son of North Dale, of St. Mary, Whitechapel, silk- 

 thrower. He was apprenticed for eight years co an apothecary, and in 

 1686, commenced practising at Braintree as a physician. His chief 

 work, Pkarmacologia, the first important systematic work on the 

 subject, appeared in 1693, a supplement following in 1705. His 

 second great work, The History and Antiquities of Harwich and 

 Dovercourt, written by Silas Taylor, but furnished with an appendix 

 by Dale which exceeds the main work in bulk, was published 

 in 1730. Dale died on June 6, 1739, and was buried in the 

 Dissenters' burial-ground at Booking. His herbarium, bequeathed 

 to the Apothecaries' Company, is now in the British Museum, and 

 the neat and elaborate tickets to plants obtained from numerous 

 correspondents bear witness to his botanical worth. I am not aware 

 that he made any observations on the birds of this county, except 

 those given in his History of Harwich, many of which are not clear 

 as to whether they are general or local. 



DANIEL, Rev. W. B. (about 1753 ?— 1833), author of 

 Rural Sports, was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, taking 

 the degree of B.A. in 1787 and that of M.A. in 1790. He does not 

 appear to have been ever beneficed, although he took orders. He 

 seems to have indulged in sporting tastes to a degree which shocked 

 even his tolerant age. A writer in the Gentleman^ s Magazine (1802, 

 Ixxii, 621) says, with regard to his unwillingness to own his title as a 

 clergyman, "perhaps there is propriety in such renunciation, for 

 where is the consistency between a fisher of men and a hunter of 

 beasts." He died, at the reputed age of eighty, in Garden Row, 

 within the Rules of the King's Bench, where he had resided for 

 twenty years. Rural Sports, which appeared in 1801, was the 

 delight of sportsmen at the beginning of this century, and has been, 

 says a writer in the Quarterly Review, " the basis of many a later 

 book on field sports." It contains a fair number of references to 

 sport and natural history in Essex, due, it may be imagined, to the 

 probable fact of his having resided at Great Waltham, of which 

 parish, it is said, he was once rector. 



DIX, Thomas (1830 — 1873 ?)> ^^'^s born at Dickleburgh, 

 Norfolk, but in early life his parents removed to Essex, and he after- 

 wards became the tenant of Stanford Rivers Hall, near Romford, which 

 he farmed for many years. Whilst residing there, he became intimate 

 with Henry Doubleday ; but I have not been able to ascertain that 

 he has left any observations of interest, although he is known to have 



