Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock (b. Dundalk 1819, d. 1907), F.R.S.,
was one of the great Arctic explorers, having spent eleven navigable
seasons and six winters in those regions. He was the chief leader and
organizer of the Franklin searches. From the scientific point of view
he made a valuable collection of miocene fossils from Greenland, and
enabled Haughton to prepare the geological map and memoir of the
Parry Archipelago.
John Ball (b. Dublin 1818, d. 1889), F.R.S., educated at Oscott,
passed the examination for a high degree at Cambridge, but, being a
Catholic, was excluded from the degree itself and any other honors
which a Protestant might have attained to. He travelled widely and
published many works on the natural history of Europe and South
America from Panama to Tierra del Fuego. He was the first to suggest
the utilization of the electric telegraph for meteorological purposes
connected with storm warnings.
Space ought to be found for a cursory mention of that strange person,
Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859), who by his _Lardner's Cyclopaedia_ in
132 vols., his _Cabinet Library_, and his _Museum of Science and
Art_, did much to popularize science in an unscientific day.