Annual Report of the Council. 291 



The losses, by death, of the Society during the Session 

 are : — Ordinary members, Dr. J. P. Joule, F.R.S., Mr. John 

 Dale, F.C.S., Mr. Daniel Adamson, M.Inst.C.E., and Mr. 

 Andrew Knowles ; Honorary members, MM. G. A. Hirn, 

 H. D. Buys Ballot and G. H. Halphen. References to Dr. 

 Joule's death and the initiation of a Memorial to him by 

 the Council will be found in the current volume of the 

 Memoirs and Proceedings, pp. 5, 55, and 112, and a memoir 

 of his life is in preparation by the President. Obituary 

 notices of MM. Hirn and Buys Ballot have also appeared 

 in the current volume of Memoirs and Proceedings, pp. 159 

 and 167. 



By the death of JOHN Dale technical chemistry has lost 

 one of its foremost pioneers, who was acknowledged as such 

 on the Continent and in America as well as in the United 

 Kingdom. Dale was a born chemist ; a man may be taught 

 chemistry, but he never will distinguish himself as a chemist, 

 if he does not possess an enthusiasm for the science, and 

 this Dale had in the highest degree. He was born at 

 Birmingham, on the nth of May, 1815, and educated in 

 his native town, and in Warwick. In the latter place he 

 had a schoolmaster of whom he always spoke with great 

 admiration. This excellent man took his pupils out for a 

 walk, asking questions on all natural objects they came 

 across, and at the same time giving them instructions. To 

 this original and attractive mode of teaching, Dale attributed 

 much of the acuteness and power of observation by which 

 he was distinguished. After his school days, Dale was 

 apprenticed to a chemist and druggist at Denbigh, and from 

 there he moved to Rhyl, where he had access to a number 

 of chemical and pharmaceutical works, which enabled him 

 to prosecute his studies. We next find him in Manchester 

 as assistant to Mr. Ansell, a member of the Society of 

 Friends and an acquaintance of Dalton, with whom Dale 

 also soon became acquainted, and from being his pupil he 



