X. MEMOIR OF DAVEY. 



During the winter session, 1900-1, he studied Chemistry 

 and Assaying at the Redruth School of Mines. He never worked 

 in or on any mine. 



About this time he settled down to the study of Botany to 

 the almost complete exclusion of other nature subjects, and 

 seriously began the formation of his excellent Herbarium of 

 Cornish and other British plants, now in the Museum of the 

 Royal Institution of Cornwall. About this time, too, his health 

 improved, and he was able to take longer botanical excursions 

 outside his immediate neighbourhood. 



In 1899 he first met Mr. A. O. Hume, C.B., an enthusiastic 

 plant collector, and there can be little doubt that this proved 

 the turning point in his career, and the start of his life's work, 

 namely, the Flora. 



It was at the Autumn Meeting of the Royal Institution of 

 Cornwall in 1899 that he announced his intention of preparing a 

 Flora of Cornwall, and asked for the assistance of other field 

 botanists. This was followed by a letter in the local newspapers 

 in March, 1900, again asking for help. This was the commence- 

 ment of my acquaintance with him, and it was not long before 

 we became very close friends. It was a vast work that he had 

 undertaken, and one full of difficulties. He was a young botanist, 

 at that time quite unknown outside Cornwall, and he was not 

 in robust health or flourishing circumstances. He had little spare 

 time; no good herbarium or reference library near at hand to 

 consult; and there was no existing Flora of the County, which he 

 could use as a foundation for his own. However, he threw 

 himself undaunted into the work. He soon collected around 

 him a band of willing helpers, willing because he infected us 

 with some of his own enthusiasm and treated us with unfailing 

 kindness, and because we felt that his was a master mind. 



His first contribution, in 1895, to the Royal Institution of 

 Cornwall, to which his more important botanical papers were 

 communicated, was an article on a Local Study in Plant Dis- 

 tribution. This was followed in 1896 by a note on Bulbils and 

 Gemmae; in 1897 by notes on the Acclimatisation of Exotics in 

 the Falmouth-Truro district; the Bulbil Mite; Functions of Colour 

 and Smell in Fungi; and the Dry Summer of 1896; and, in 1898, 

 an article dealing with some Natural History Records. In 1899 

 he communicated the first of a series of papers on Cornish 

 Botanical Records, the last of which was a combined report for 

 the years 1909-1910. His final contribution to the Institution 

 was a record of the Phytogeographical Excursion to Cornwall in 



