198 
SAMUEL DALE. 
(Wirn Porrrarr.) 
In the course of my tracing the history of botany in Hssex, I 
came to the life and works of Samuel Dale, the neighbour and 
executor of Ray, a found that jess was known of him than his 
great critical acumen and Britis te “apse z tis looked through 
his valuable herbarium, transfer years ago from the 
Apothecaries Company’s Ga rden at 24 ee ee the "British Museum, 
and from his own admirably drawn up and neatly written labels 
mae of f the facts of the following biography are obtained. 
Samuel Dale is said to have been born in 1659, which date 
agrees with the inscription “etatis sue 78’’ on his portrait 
engraved by Geo. Vertue, 1737, and prefixed to the third edition of 
the ‘ Pharmacologia,’ published i in that year. He was apprenticed 
on the Soa of May, 1674, as the ‘‘son of North: Dale of ye pa 
of St. Mary Whitecha appell in County Middlsx. silk-thrower .. . to 
‘Thos. Wells for 8 yeares ;” but as he seems never to have practised 
as an apothecary in London it was not necessary for him to 
out his freedom as a ae aE of the Society of Apothecaries, and 
he seems never to have don 
A manuscript note by Dawson Turner in a copy of Pulteney 
in the British Museum says, ‘“* He was born at Braintree — 
1658.” The year may be more probable ha 1659; but I 
been unable, as yet, to confirm the statement as to the lai ‘of 
his birth. 
He settled at Braintree, practising sppartatly both as a phy- 
sician and as apothecary, thou ugh the biographical hictionsries 3 oOBy 
one another in saying as apothecary only. Ray, in the Preface to 
the first volume of his ‘ apse Plantar (1686), alludes re “bit 
as ‘‘D. Samuel Dale, Medicus et Pharmacopzus vicinus et fami 
liaris noster, Branicio in Tesetia degens, qui libris diligenbee : 
collatis Synonyma examinavit, errata correxit, et omissa supplevit, 
preeterea an species per in incuriam aut festinati onem omissas 
observavit, me commonefecit, ut ejus | ope Historia nostra aliquot 
mendis Siren et Sa aucta si 
_ This was only written about seven years after the return of the 
great naturalist we his childhood’s home (1679); but Pulteney’s 
surmise that “it is highly probable, that from their vicinity to 
each other, Dale owed to Mr. Ray his attachment to natura 
and twenty, and a careful comparison of the work of the teacher 
and that oe the disciple i probably convince most people t that 
the latter, confining his attention to a more limited field, reached 
a far - gher pitch of critical accuracy of detail. 
1688 Ray printed the small supplement to his ‘ — 
JournaL or Borany.—Vou. 21. [Juny, 1883.] 
