60 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
Sarah Finch, £40, towards her better support and subsistence
while she lives," desiring her, on her death, to bequeath any
unexpended portion of it to her (Mrs. Dale's) sisters, Rebecca
and Jane Finch, to whom also she leaves £80 each, appointing
them her sole joint executors.
Dale's botanical work (the chief occupation, other than
professional, of his life) has been dealt with already by Prof.
G. S. Boulger. From the labels on the plants in Dale's Her-
barium, now in the British Museum,62 Prof. Boulger has been
able almost to construct a Life of Dale,63 following him in
his occasional journeys about England, his visits to London
(chiefly late in life), and his many short expeditions to Harwich,
Sudbury, and other places in the vicinity, undertaken, no doubt,
partly with professional, and partly with botanical, objects.
That Dale owed his interest in botany directly to his personal
intimacy with Ray has been brought out clearly by Prof,
Boulger, and Dale himself fully acknowledged his indebted-
ness.64 On the other hand, the pupil was able, as lime went
on, to render very great services to the master, in the way of
collecting and observing plants; and Ray, in many of his
works, acknowledges fully his indebtedness to Dale in this
respect, speaking of him, even as early as 1686, as "my friend
and neighbour."65 Dale's standing as a botanist may be judged,
to some extent, from the fact that he was one of the seventeen
Englishmen to whom a plate (pl. 96) in Michaelis' Nova Genera
Plantarum (1729) is dedicated. The author, a poor but learned
man, had induced 193 botanists throughout Europe (including
the 17 English) to support him by subscribing for the engraving
of plates for his Work, each plate being then dedicated to a
subscriber. He had, no doubt, approached Dale through
Dr. William Sherard, of Oxford.66
But Dale's scientific interests extended to much more than
Botany merely; for he took a practical and intelligent interest
in the study of many branches of Nature.
Thus, on 8th March 1692-3 (seven years before the publication
of the work on English Mineral Springs by Dale's friend and
62 See post, p. 68.
63 See Journ. of Botany, xxi. (1883), pp. 193-197 and 225-231.
64 See Essex Naturalist, xvii., pp. 157-158.
65 Historia Plantarum, 3 vols. fo. (1686-1704).
66 See Miss G. Lister, in Essex Nat., xviii., pp. 1-2; also Trans. Brit. Mycol. Soc., 1912,
pp. 45-47.