Mary Ball (naturalist)

Irish naturalist and entomologist

Mary Ball (1812–1898) was an Irish naturalist and entomologist most noted for her studies of Odonata and for her discovery of the stridulation in aquatic bugs in the family Corixidae.

Mary Ball was born in 1812, the second daughter of Bob Stawell Ball and his wife Mary née Green. She was born near Cobh, County Cork, but shortly moved with the family to nearby Youghal, County Cork. Mary had three siblings who lived into adulthood: Robert, Bent (1806–1860), and Anne, a well known algologist. The family was Protestant and "involved in trade". There is not much known about Mary's training, but as a middle class family she certainly would have access to a microscope and the latest volumes of natural history and scientific classification of the times. It has been recorded that Robert started collecting specimens with his father at the age of five. It can be assumed that Mary would have participated as well. Mary concentrated on collecting shells and insects, accumulating what was considered one of the best collections of molluscs in the country at the time, though it was disposed after her death.

Mary, as was the convention, did not publish her work under her own name. The three known works were all communicated by her brother Robert. They are:

"On the sounds produced by the Notonectidae under water" Annals and Magazine of Natural History 16: 129. (1846)
"On the noises produced by one of the Notonectidae Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science". Notices and abstracts of communications Cambridge Meeting, June 1845: 64–65. Ball, R. (1846). "Corixa striata, Curtis". Annals and Magazine of Natural History 17: 135–136. (18 )

Her observations of butterflies and moths were cited by the "father of Irish entomology" Alexander Henry Haliday in his work on the Irish Lepidoptera.