MEMOIR 0E THE LATE EGBERT BALL, LL. D, 
project that promised an escape from desk-work, and an energetic, in¬ 
dependent career of usefulness. It is not strange, therefore, that at 
times there flitted before him a vision of Hew Zealand, and that for 
years after this period his thoughts turned towards its proffered freedom. 
In one letter (9th February, 1839), in speaking of the colonization and 
improvement of that country, he says:—“I am physically and men¬ 
tally particularly well suited for the work; and though banishment 
from the many friends I possess would be most painful, yet. the high 
nature of the service to be attempted would console me.” 
The intervening years from 1834 to 1840 were eventful and impor¬ 
tant both in his social and scientific career. On the 12th January, 1835, 
his friend William Thompson, Esq., of Belfast, wrote to him in the fol¬ 
lowing terms :—“As you have not at present sufficient leisure to impart 
(in print) your accumulated knowledge of the Natural History of this 
country, I mean to forward for publication all you communicate to me, 
in your own name, and mark it off with inverted commas as your pro¬ 
duction, doing, at the same time, as I would be done by, in correcting 
any verbal matters that in your haste did not claim a second thought.” 
Such was the simple commencement of that correspondence which did 
so much to elucidate the Fauna of Ireland, and has preserved hundreds 
of observations made by Dr. Ball, which would otherwise, in all proba¬ 
bility, have perished with him. 
It was in this year, 1835, that I first became acquainted with Ball. 
I was introduced to him by a note from Thompson, which now lies 
before me. From this period until his untimely death our correspon¬ 
dence continued, progressing from the topics which belong to literature 
and science, until it included those whose province is the domestic 
hearth, and which flourish only in the atmosphere of a happy home. 
In the early part of this spring he became a member of the Boyal 
Irish Academy, and was elected on the Council of the Zoological So¬ 
ciety. He paid a visit, with Mr. Thompson, to Ireland’s Eye, and 
mentions that he got “ one hundred and fifty specimens of plants, and 
upwards of fifty species of algae.” He speaks in high terms—which all 
who have used it can corroborate—of a varnish specially adapted for 
natural history specimens, and a mode of preserving fish “which really 
is superlative.” In that summer the British Association for Science 
held its meeting in Dublin. Ball took, of course, an active part in what 
was going on:—in the business of the Natural History Section; in the 
arrangements at the Zoological Gardens for the visit of the Association; 
and in acts of attention and hospitality to many of its members, with 
whom he then formed a personal acquaintance. At this meeting he was 
requested to investigate the mode in which the Echinus lividus exca¬ 
vates the.rocks on which it is found. 
The year 1835 was memorable in another respect. In it he accom¬ 
plished a visit to the islands of Arran, lying off the west coast of Ire¬ 
land, at the entrance of Galway Bay. His companion was the Yery 
Rev. Henry B. Dawson, Dean of St. Patrick’s, whose splendid collection 
of antiquities now graces the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. 
vol. v.— eev. c 
