156 A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN.
add nothing to my bare enumeration of his chief works to prove
his industry ; but time has prevented me from doing justice to a
conscientiousness and modesty which invariably gave to others
full credit for their work and help. In the halting language
of the recently-discovered first volume of Dr. Benjamin Allen's
Note Book, we have an example of his reverence, which seems,
I think, almost to anticipate the well-known stanza of
Tennyson. "He said also," we are told, "that a spoyle or
smile of grass shew'd a Deity as much as anything ; nothing
in it to raise, keep, or support it, but a Divine power by which
it stands and grows." This is surely an anticipation of the
poet's "Flower in the crannied wall."
To term Ray the father of natural history in this country
is at once unfair to some earlier naturalists, and quite inadequate
as expressing the scope of his work. If not worthy to be men-
tioned as a philosopher, he vastly surpasses Aristotle as a zoolo-
gist; and if not, like Caesalpinus, the "parent of system," we
need not hesitate to rank him, for his elaboration of a Natural
System, with Linnaeus or Jussieu.
No one would think for a moment of classing Samuel Dale
in the same category of greatness with his master Ray ; but
in certain directions he surpassed his teacher. Ray was able,
as we have seen, for a great part of his life, to devote himself
exclusively to scientific research. Dale was engaged through-
out his mature years in the practice of a laborious profession.
To him, as to Allen, in the same profession, science could be but
a hobby for hours of relaxation. Dale wisely, therefore, set
himself simpler tasks than those accomplished by his illustrious
master, and of three of these he only managed to complete two.
Few details are known of Dale's private life. What there is
was either pieced together by me in 1883, largely from the
tickets of his herbarium, or has been laboriously collected
from local records by Mr. Miller Christy.
Samuel Dale was born in 1658 or 1659, possibly at Braintree,
but more probably, I think, in Whitechapel. His father is
described as "of the parish of St. Mary, Whitechappel, silk-
throwster" ; so that it has naturally occurred to me that he
might have had trade connections with Braintree and may
even have been of Huguenot family. In 1674, i.e. at about