160 A EULOGY OF RAY, DALE AND ALLEN.
said to have been grown from foreign seed in his garden here in
Braintree.
In 1730, Dale published the second great work of his life,
The History and Antiquities of Harwich and Dovercourt. The
History and Antiquities, it is true, were from the manuscript
of one Silas Taylor ; but the Appendix by Dale, "containing
the Natural History of the Sea-coast and country about
Harwich, particularly the Cliff, the Fossils, Plants, Trees, Birds,
and Fishes," is much the larger part of the book. Though in
the preface Dale apologises in that "dwelling more than 30
miles from the place and being continually employed in his
Profession" he "could not afford more time than perhaps one
day or two in a year, and that in the summer months," he gives
a full account of the mineral products, such as "copperas-stones" 
and "Selenites" ; describes 20 fossil gasteropods and 18
bivalves ; gives an accurate geological section of the cliff ; and
enumerates 60 fishes, 47 birds, 36 shell-fish, and 94 of the less
common plants. His work thus became a Natural and Civil
history of the place such as is seldom produced even to-day.
To me, however, it is not mainly as a pharmacologist or
as a local historian that Dale mainly appeals. I happen to have
had an exceptional opportunity of gauging his merit as a botanist.
Any one knowing his neat handwriting and looking through the
British Herbarium in the Natural History Museum will see
the painstaking work of a pre-Linnaean botanist. Synonyms
from Gerard, Johnson, Parkinson, Bauhin, Tournefort, and
Ray are not only quoted, but discussed. I, however, in 1882,
saw more than this. Dale's Herbarium, bequeathed by him,
with that of Ray, to the Society of Apothecaries, had then
been transferred to the Natural History Museum ; but it was
still by itself, in the fascicles as he had left it at his death in 1739.
There I found specimens of Mints, Burdocks, Sea-lavenders,
and other genera which the botanist terms "critical," such as
Atriplex and Artemisia, in some cases unlabelled or at least
unnamed, forms not then recognised as distinct and worthy of
separate names, but separated, placed in distinct sheets and
evidently recognised as distinct by the maker of the collection.
This evidence is now destroyed by the collection having been
incorporated in the general British Herbarium ; but it is on the
strength of this that I then claimed for Dale a rank with his