268 ROCHESTER ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



". . . In connection with Peary's polar expeditions he distributed over 

 5,000 blanks to observers in all the continents, in order to have simultaneous 

 records from as wide a region as possible. It was always a pleasure to 

 Dr. Veeder that people in many' lands took such interest in recording and 

 reporting auroras for him. These aurora studies led him to consider the 

 relation between the activities of the sun and the earth. The result was 

 that by 1895 he had framed an hypothesis which may possibly prove to be 

 one of the most important contributions not only to meteorology but to 

 astronomy." 



"This modest, unassuming, but highly gifted man should never have been 

 obliged to get a living by practicing medicine. He ought to have been 

 connected with some great scientific institution where he would have been 

 free to carry on his researches untrammelled by anxiety about the support 

 of his family. His mind was extrao'rdinarily fertile in ideas, not only in 

 respect to his own profession but along other scientific lines. He appears 

 to have been the first to publish an article clearly setting forth the now 

 well-accepted idea that typhoid germs are carried by flies, and it was upon 

 his advice that the medical department of the United States Government 

 adopted its successful policy of preventing the spread of typhoid fever in 

 Cuba and in the southern camps of our soldiers during the Spanish War. 

 He was also a pioneer in advocating the open-air treatment of tuberculosis, 

 and was perhaps the first adequately to explain it. . . ." 



H. L. Fairchild. 



JOHN MASON DAVISON 

 (Read before the Academy, February 12, 1917.) 



The subject of this sketch was born in Albany, N. Y., December 

 18, 1840, of New England ancestry. His father, bearing the same 

 naine, was Registrar in Chancery of the State of New York from 

 1839 to 1848. Mr. Davison senior became President of the Sara- 

 toga and Whitehall Railroad Company, and also of the Adirondack 

 Railroad Company. His mother, Sarah S. Walworth, was the 

 daughter of Reuben Hyde Walworth, who was for many years 

 Chancellor of the State. In 1848 the family removed to Saratoga 

 Springs. 



Mr. Davison's early education was in the academies of Saratoga 

 Springs and Ballston Spa, and in the Canandaigua Academy. The 

 Principal of the latter school, Noah T. Clarke, was his cousin. He 

 entered Williams College in 1858 and graduated in 1862 with the 

 degree Bachelor of Arts. 



