Douglas William Freshfield

“ Ball was himself rather a scientific traveller than a great climber, and his taste for solitary rambles was perhaps too strong to make the numbers needed for safety in the region above the snow level altogether congenial to him. But the extent of his Alpine travels, mostly on foot, is indicated by his own statement. ”

“ Sir J. D. Hooker thus describes Ball's theoretical essays in botany: in that '"On the Origin of the Flora of the European Alps" (Geogr. Soc. Proc. 1879, pp. 564–88) , he argued for the high antiquity of the Alpine flora, and for the earliest types of flowering plants having been confined to high mountains (thus accounting for their absence in a fossil state) , due to the proportion of carbonic acid gas in the lower regions of the earth being too great to support a phenogamic vegetation. ”

“ BALL, JOHN (1818–1889) , man of science, politician, and Alpine traveller, born in Dublin on 20 Aug. 1818, was eldest son of Nicholas Ball [q. v.] , judge of the court of common pleas in Ireland, and Jane Sherlock of Butlerstown Castle, co. Waterford. In his early childhood he showed a precocious taste for out-of-door observation and works on natural science. "When in his seventh year he was taken to Switzerland, he was deeply affected by the view of the Alps from the Jura. ”