DALE, Charles William

Son of James Charles Dale (see below) and brother of Edward Robert Dale (see below). Best known as a Lepidopterist and Dipterist but he also published notes on other insects including Coleoptera, eg. ‘Scarce Coleoptera’, EMM., 26, 1890, p.244 and ‘Psammobius caesus in the Scilly Isles’, ibid., 32, 1896, p.41. Dale inherited his father's estate at Glanville's Wootton in Dorset and did much of his collecting in that county. Eustace Bankes, who wrote his obituary in EMM., 42, 1906, pp.91-92, recorded that ‘His opportunities [for collecting] were exceptionally good, his boyhood and youth being spent at home, and his educational studies making no very severe tax upon his time... When about thirty years of age, Mr Dale entered Oxford University, but after a short residence, spent chiefly at Wadham College, he returned home to Glanvilles Wootton Manor House, near Sherborne, where practically his whole life was spent.’ His rather secluded existence there meant that keeping up with contemporary developments in entomological science was difficult. The writer of his obituary in ERJV., 18, 1906, p.82, noted this and added ‘he loved above all things to indulge in retrospection of things that had been rather than to take a share in the advance of things that are’. Dale recorded in EMM., 39, 1903, p.300, that he had secured both his brother's British insect collection and his father's foreign collection. Much of this material subsequently passed to the HDO where it is maintained separately (see J.C.Dale below). Amongst the more important items listed by Smith (1986) which relate to Charles William are: a ms of insects in C.W's collection not in his father's; a catalogue of Coleoptera dated 1886; a catalogue of British insects added to the Dalean collection between 1864 and 1905; and letters from 38 correspondents. With reference to Dale's collection the following note supplied to EMM., 42, 1906, p.115, by A.E.Eaton is interesting: ‘In view of the practice, pursued for a long period, by the late Mr C.W.Dale, of substituting modern specimens in good condition for old and damaged, it should be remembered that he kept a careful register of dates and localities corresponding with the labels of the specimens in his cabinets, by reference to which the old can often be distinguished from the new, and the specimens authentically named by old authors (correspondents of his father) may sometimes be identified. Regard should also be had to the make of the pins of specimens. He relied upon comparison with specimens and illustrations in forming his own conclusions about species, using hand-lenses that were hardly of sufficient power to guide him in all cases to correct decisions; and he professed himself to be by no means facile at identifying insects by means of only written description’. Dale's library was sold by Stevens on 23 May 1906 (Chalmers-Hunt (1976) p.145) (MD 5/02)