xlvii 



Of his independent works, principally of travel in the East, and of 

 his numerous contributions to the Journals of the Royal Asiatic and 

 Geographical Societies, of the former of which he was for many 

 years Director, and of the latter President, it seems needless to speak. 

 His merits as a discoverer were recognized by honorary degrees con- 

 ferred upon him by the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and 

 Edinburgh, by the Prussian Order pour le Merite, and by his foreign 

 membership of the Institute of France, Academic des Inscriptions. It 

 is to him and to the late Sir Henry Layard that this country is 

 indebted for the most extensive and important collection of the 

 historic remains cf the ancient kingdoms of the East that has ever 

 been brought together. 



J. E. 



VALENTINE BALL, LL.D., C.B., the distinguished Director of the 

 National Museum at Dublin, whose death we have to deplore, was the 

 second son and fourth child of the well-known naturalist, Dr. Robert 

 Ball, who died in 1857. His elder brother is Sir Robert Ball, now of 

 Cambridge, and his younger brother is Dr. Charles B. Ball, of Merrion 

 Square, Dublin. Dr. Valentine Ball was born on July 14, 1843, at 

 No. 3, Granby Row, Dublin, a house well known in those days as a 

 leading centre of intellectual resort in that metropolis. He was edu- 

 cated first at a private school by Dr. Brindley, at Chester, and afterwards 

 by Rev. Dr. Benson, in the early days of Rathmines School. Valentine 

 Ball entered Trinity College in 1860, and about the same time he was 

 appointed by the late Master Fitzgibbon to a clerkship in the office of 

 the Examiner in Chancery. His University career was not an 

 eventful one in the academic sense, for the duties of his office in the 

 Four Courts did not leave him sufficient time for more than obtaining 

 an ordinary degree. A taste for scientific pui-suits was, however, so 

 marked, that in 1864, when he was twenty-one years of age, he was 

 offered a position in the Geological Survey of India, then under the 

 direction of one of bis father's oldest friends, Dr. Thomas Oldham. 

 Ball felt that this would give him the opportunity which he wanted 

 for the study of Nature in a wide field, and accordingly he went to 

 India. His duties as a geological surveyor often led him into very 

 unfrequented parts of our great Oriental possessions, and frequently, 

 for many months together, he lived in camp in the jungle, apart from 

 all other Europeans. Wherever Ball travelled he utilised his oppor- 

 tunities to the utmost ; indeed, throughout his life, his diligence could 

 hardly have been surpassed, and nothing worthy of notice that came 

 within his range was unobserved and unrecorded. It was presently 

 apparent that the young geological surveyor was not only able to 

 fulfil his duties in making a careful investigation of the rocks and of 

 their economic value, but that various other branches of natural 



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