May 8, 19 19] 



NATURE 



189 



of the snow which half covers the ground allows 

 of no other conclusion than that a thaw has set 

 in, and that the snow covering will not long 

 remain. In "Day Departing in the West " (171) 

 the same artist has another attractive snow pic- 

 ture. There is a curiously unnatural appearance 

 about "The Bathers' Pool" (765). Here a sandy 

 beach is depicted, but the sand, instead of sloping 

 gently to the sea, is cut away in an almost vertical 

 "cliff " at the water's edge, the face standing at 

 an angle which looks most unreal. 



The sea scenes which appear in numerous pic- 

 tures call for little comment, and, though some are 

 pleasing, few are of outstanding excellence. In 

 this branch of painting, the gap left by the death 

 of C. Napier Hemy seems to remain unfilled. 

 Now that the scientific spirit is beginning to per- 

 meate the world, and is no longer confined to a 

 few specialists, it may be hoped that artists will 

 come to realise that a true representation of 

 Nature may be not inconsistent with the highest 

 artistic success, while a travesty of Nature must 

 fail to satisfy a large and growing section of the 

 general public. J. S. D. 



ROBERT CHAPMAN DAVIE. 



OF the sad fates that have befallen so many 

 who have helped to win the war for us, the 

 succumbing to an attack of influenza on return 

 home after years of physical hardship in the war 

 zone is of the saddest. That has come to Capt. 

 Robert Chapman Davie, R.A.M.C, a botanist 

 fiom whom much was expected as teacher and 

 researcher. Capt. Davie crossed the Channel on 

 his way home on January 25, was attacked by 

 influenza two days later, and after a week's 

 struggle died of pneumonia at Largs on 

 February 4. 



Born in Glasgow thirty-two years agp, Davie 

 was educated at the Glasgow High School and 

 at the University of Glasgow, where he graduated 

 M..^. in 1907, obtaining a first class in English 

 literature. Later, in 1909, he took the degree of 

 B.Sc, distinguishing himself particularly in botany 

 and in chemistry. In botany he was Dobbie-Smith 

 gold medallist and also Donaldson research 

 scholar. Whether botany or chemistry was to 

 attract him for his life-work he had difficulty in 

 deciding. The enthusiasm of his botanical teacher, 

 Prof. Bower, finally determined his devotion to 

 botany, and he became an assistant in the 

 botanical department of his alma mater. In 191 2 

 Davie migrated to fill the post of assistant in the 

 botanical department of the University of Edin- 

 burgh, and in 1913 he was appointed lecturer on 

 botany in the University. In 191 5 he graduated 

 D.Sc. of the University of Glasgow. His appoint- 

 ment a couple of years ago as one of the secre- 

 taries of the botany section of the British Asso- 

 ciation pleased him greatly, and was an apt choice 

 of a man with much business capacity and wide 

 botanical knowledge. An attack of rheumatic 

 fever in early life had somewhat undermined his 

 health, causing him frequently some heart trouble, 

 NO. 2584, VOL. 103] 



and in consequence of this he was able to join 

 the Army only in 19 17 to fill a post where scientific 

 knowledge rather than physical endurance was 

 required, and he was at the time of his death 

 senior chemist in the 4th W'ater Tank Company 

 in France. 



A prominent characteristic of all that Davie did, 

 whether as teacher or as researcher, was that of 

 precision, and his literary gifts enabled him, alike 

 in the lecture hall and in his writings descriptive 

 of his scientific research, to present his facts and 

 arguments with a fluency of diction and a grace of 

 style that ensured lucid exposition. His chief 

 research was in the domain of the Pteridophyta, 

 a natural consequence of his upbringing in the 

 home of work in the group under Prof. Bower. 

 An investigation of the East Asiatic ferns of the 

 genera Paranema and Diacalpe was his first essay 

 (1912), and in the course of settling disputed points 

 of their relationships he entered the controversial 

 field of the "fern stele and pinna-trace," wherein 

 he reaped largely then and also later, carrying on 

 his line of research from the ferns, through the 

 Cycads, into the Angiosperms. 



Davie's grouping of the ferns by the form of 

 the leaf-trace in his last paper, published so recently 

 as 191 8 during his absence, is essentially in har- 

 mony with groupings to which Prof. Bower and 

 others had been led by analysis of other characters, 

 and shows that amidst the laborious examination 

 of the dry bones of anatomy Davie's research was 

 inspired throughout by thought of origins and 

 adaptations. How, why, when, are its keynotes, 

 and the facts, bald statement of which as evidence 

 of difference or likeness satisfie'd many of the older 

 writers on the same subject, interested Davie 

 solely from the point of view of interpretation. 

 This attitude finds expression in his most import- 

 ant paper — delayed in publication through the 

 manuscript having been destroyed by a fire at the 

 printers', and having to be rewritten — in an 

 interesting analysis of the relative degree in which 

 phyletic factors and those of specific adaptation 

 have been operative in bringing about the forms 

 of leaf-trace development in connection with water 

 supply in plants. If the precision of his mind led 

 him at the moment to segregate factors in the 

 sev^eral groups and classes of vascular plants with 

 a definiteness of generalisation which addition to 

 the few data as yet available outside the ferns 

 may show to require modification, the attempt 

 and its methods are suggestive, and, carried 

 further, as was his intention, must, in his hands, 

 have thrown much light upon the proper appraise- 

 ment of the value of anatomy in questions of 

 obscure relationships of the higher plants, and 

 given clues helping to the understanding of their 

 phylogeny in relation to cosmic history. 



On removal to Edinburgh, Davie took up the 

 study of the Proteaceae from the phyletic point 

 of view; their conjectured relationship to Legu- 

 minosae fascinated him. Assisted by a grant from 

 the Royal Society, he spent some months of 1914 

 in Brazil making observations and gathering- 

 material, especially of Roupala, which, through its 



