IV THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



The notice of Dr. James was written by Professor A. E. Lang; 

 Dr. H, M. Ami contributed the notice of Dr. Hoffmann; Dr. J. C. 

 McLennan that of Dr. Loudon; and Dr. J. P. McMurrich has contri- 

 buted the notice of Dr. Brodie. 



Charles Canniff James. 



Charles Canniff James, M.A., LL.D., C.M.G., died suddenly 

 at St. Catharines on June 23rd, 1916. 



Dr. James was born at Napanee on the 14th of June, 1863. He 

 was the son of Charles James, J. P., and Ellen Canniff of United Empire 

 Loyalist stock. He was educated in Napanee High School and at the 

 University of Victoria College in Cobourg whence he was graduated, 

 B.A., in 1883 with the Gold Medal in Natural Science. From 1883 

 to 1886 he was a master in the Cobourg Collegiate Institute, and in 

 the latter year received from his Alma Mater the degree of M.A. 

 The same year, 1886, he was appointed Professor of Chemistry in 

 the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph. In 1887 he married 

 Frances L., daughter of James Crossen, Esq., of Cobourg, who, with 

 one son, Lieut. Wilfrid Crossen James, survives him. 



In 1891, Mr. James was appointed Deputy Minister of Agriculture 

 for Ontario by the Hon. John Dryden, a position which he held for 

 more than twenty years. It was during this period of unremitting, 

 and often thankless, toil that he gained that profound knowledge of 

 agricultural conditions and developed those gifts of organization 

 which finally took him out of his native Province and brought him 

 into the larger service of the Dominion. In 1912 he was appointed 

 to the Dominion Department of Agriculture as Commissioner to 

 administer the Agricultural Instruction Act. There was no other 

 Canadian so well qualified for this office, and his appointment by 

 the Hon. Martin Burrell met with universal approval. He under- 

 took the new task of advising in the expenditure of the large sums 

 of money granted to the provincial governments for the extension of 

 agricultural education with characteristic energy, never sparing 

 himself in the prosecution of a task which he realised had so impor- 

 tant a relation to the welfare of Canadian agriculture. 



There are few Canadians living today who could so ill have been 

 spared during the present crisis in the world's history as Dr. James. 

 There are few who, both by training and temperament were so well 

 fitted to direct the energies of the people into channels, the importance 

 of which we have only recently begun to realize. When the war broke 

 out he was one of the first to grasp the supreme importance for the 

 Empire of the food situation, and he organized and threw all his ener- 



