BY T. HARVEY JOHNSTON. 13 
He was one of the local commissioners to the Inter- 
national Exhibition held in Melbourne in 1888, as well 
as to Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London in 1886. 
In regard to Mr. DeVis’ scientific work, it may be men- 
tioned that about forty papers were published by him in 
the Proceedings of this Society, between 1884 and 1894. 
Whilst Sir William MacGregor was Administrator of British 
New Guinea, Mr DeVis furnished him with eight reports 
on the avian and reptilian fauna and anthropology, based 
on collections made under the auspices of the Lieutenant 
Governor. These were printed in the latter’s Annual 
Reports for the Territory, 1884-1894, and have, in some 
instances, been reprinted by the Colonial Office and the 
British Ornithologists’ Union. 
He was an active Corresponding Member of the Linnean 
Society of N.S.W. and published nearly forty papers 
in its Proceedings. 
As one might have expected, the Annals of the Queens- 
Jand Museum contain many contributions from his pen. 
At the time of his death, Mr. DeVis was engaged 
upon a comparative vocabulary of the Australian race, 
a compilation drawn from numerous sources. Mr. Tryon 
informs me that he believes that the manuscript has, in 
compliance with Mr. DeVis’ request, been handed over 
to the Queensland Department for the Protection of 
Aboriginals. 
Mr. DeVis’ reputation as a scientific investigator 
rests chiefly on his work on the vertebrate fossils of Aus- 
tralian post-tertiary deposits. He, however, carried out 
a great deal of systematic work on recent mammals, birds, 
reptiles and fish, and besides was also interested in Anthro- 
pology, and published a few small papers on Papuan ethn- 
ology. 
The following is a list of Mr. DeVis’ published papers :— 
Ornithological Notes from Manchester. Zoologist 23, 
1865, pp. 9596-7; Notes on the Myology of Viverra civetta, 
Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, 2, 1868, pp. 207-217 ; 
Elasticity of Animal type, Anthropol. Soc. Mem. 3, 1870, 
pp. 81-105. These three were published prior to his arrival 
in Australia. 
