28 
MEMOIB OP THE LATE KOBEBT BALL, LL. D. 
Gardens, at which many of their plans are discussed, and the business of 
the Society transacted, while at the same time a kindly and social en- 
tercourse is maintained among the members who, for the time being, 
have the guidance of its affairs. To his efforts they owed, in a great 
degree, the splendid present of the Giraffe in 1847, from the Zoological 
Society in the Begent’s Park, London. To his untiring labours and 
rigid economy they mainly attribute the preservation of the collection 
in the Garden, during the dread visitation of the famine in 1846 and 
1847. 
There are two circumstances connected with this Society, which de¬ 
serve a special mention, though necessarily brief: first, the establish¬ 
ment of the zoological lectures; and secondly, the penny admission to 
the Gardens for the working classes. 
The lectures commenced in the year 1838, and were eminently suc¬ 
cessful. Por some years many of the most distinguished individuals in 
Dublin took partin them; much interest was manifested in the subjects 
brought forward; and a large accession to the funds of the Society ac¬ 
crued. Dr. Ball himself gave a hearty co-operation, and delivered five 
lectures, which appeared in Saunders’ Newsletter; one of those was 
that referred to {ante, p. 17); the others were on “ Sloths,” on “ Birds,” 
on “ Electrical Eishes ;” and in the winter of 1840, a resume of those 
previously delivered during that season. Some of those lectures he 
prepared with great care, and rendered them highly philosophical, 
though popular, expositions of the subjects discussed. 
The penny admission on Sunday after 2 o’clock was first instituted 
in 1840. In 1855 the same privilege was extended to visitors to the 
Garden after 6 o’clock in the summer evenings. The Deports of the 
Council give us the exact number of penny admissions in each succes¬ 
sive year, and is the best proof of their importance. Erom the fifteen 
years, from 1840 to 1855, the average annual attendance was 75,450 ! 
"Who can estimate the amount of harmless pleasure that has thus been 
diffused among the humbler classes of a populous city; or the infor¬ 
mation imparted, and the craving for further knowledge inspired; or 
the intemperance averted; or the blessed influences called into ac¬ 
tivity, when the members of a toiling family partake of a pleasure 
which tends to elevate and to refine ? 
It was a great source of satisfaction to Dr. Ball that the arrange¬ 
ment by which the Boyal Zoological Society was to receive £500 a year 
from Government, to be paid through the Boyal Dublin Society, was 
effected. It not only gave to the Zoological an assured stability, a cer¬ 
tainty of income, but it was the public recognition of a principle as yet 
but imperfectly acknowledged, that the study of Zoology is worthy of 
support from the public funds of the nation. 
The subject of Educational Zoology, and its intellectual and moral 
influences, was adverted to by Dr. Ball and others on several occasions 
in the courses of lectures delivered before this Society. It was one that 
he had much at heart, and which I find often mentioned in his letters. 
He wished the rudiments of the study to be universally introduced into 
