THOMAS POTTS JAMES. 1 



Thomas Potts James died at his residence in Cam- 

 bridge, February 22, 1882, in the seventy-ninth year of his 

 age. He had been a Fellow of the Academy for only four 

 years, most of his life having been spent in Philadelphia, in 

 the neighborhood of which city he was born on the 1st of 

 September, 1803. His paternal and maternal ancestors were 

 notable persons among the earlier settlers of Pennsylvania. 

 For forty years he was engaged in business in Philadelphia 

 as a wholesale druggist, on the relinquishment of which he 

 removed to Cambridge, bringing his wife and their four chil- 

 dren to her paternal home. From his youth he was more or 

 less devoted to botany ; but of late years, having more leisure 

 for the indulgence of his taste, and wishing to be more than 

 an amateur, he devoted himself exclusively and most sedu- 

 lously to bryology, in which he became a proficient. After 

 the death of Mr. Sullivant in 1873, Mr. James and our asso- 

 ciate, Lesquereux, were looked to as the principal authorities 

 upon Mosses in this country ; and the duty appropriately de- 

 volved upon them of preparing the systematic work upon 

 North American Bryology which Mr. Sullivant had planned. 

 Owing to the preoccupation of Mr. Lesquereux in vegetable 

 palaeontology, the laboring oar fell to Mr. James. He had 

 already published some papers upon the subject in the "Trans- 

 actions of the American Philosophical Society," of which he 

 had long been an active member, and he had contributed to 

 Mr. Watson's " Botany of Clarence King's Exploration on the 

 Fortieth Parallel " a notable article on the Mosses of that 

 survey. Our own Academy has also published some of the 

 results of the joint study of these two veteran bryologists. 

 The characters of Mosses in these days are mostly drawn 



1 Proceedings American Academy of Arts and Science, xvii. 405. 

 (1882.) 



