528 Obituary — Br. Thomas Davidson. 



OBITTJJ^ia-Y". 



THOMAS DAVIDSON, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., F.L.S., &c. 



Born May 17, 1817; Died October 14, 1885. 



It is with profound regret tbat we have to record the death 

 of another eminent British paleeontologist, whose loss from our 

 ranks we must all deplore. Although Dr. Davidson's ancestral 

 home was at Muirhouse, near Edinburgh, he had long resided 

 in Brighton, and had identified himself as Chairman of the 

 Committee with the Free Public Museum and Library of that 

 town ; to which he had also been a liberal donor. 



We published in April, 1871, in the pages of this Magazine, 

 an account of Dr. Davidson's life, with a portrait of himself 

 and a list of his Memoirs to that date. He has since completed 

 his magnificent work on the British Fossil Brachiopoda 

 for the Palgeontographical Society (of which he was a Vice- 

 President), which occupies five large quarto volumes illustrated 

 with over 200 plates drawn by the author's own hands. He 

 has prepared the article Brachiopoda for the " Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica " ; monographed the entire series of Brachiopoda 

 collected during the exploring expedition of H.M.S. " Chal- 

 lenger " ; prepared an exhaustive memoir on Eecent Brachio- 

 poda now in course of publication by the Linn^an Society, 

 besides various lesser papers in the pages of this Magazine 

 and elsewhere. He may be truly described as one of the most 

 hard-working and single-minded Naturalists of the present 

 century. Although living much in retirement, he had been 

 elected an Honorary Member of all the chief Scientific Societies 

 in Europe and Amei'ica ; he had also been decorated with the 

 Gold Medal of the Royal Society in 1870, the Wollaston Gold 

 Medal of the Geological Society in 1865, and the " Silurian 

 Medal" by Murchison in 1868. He died at his residence, 9, 

 Salisbury Road, Brighton, having been for some time a great 

 sufferer from an acute affection of the lungs.' 



As a final act of generosity, Dr. Davidson has bequeathed 

 his magnificent collection of Recent and Fossil Brachiopoda, 

 containing a large proportion of the " types " figured in his 

 various works, together with his Books and Original Drawings, 

 to the Nation, to be preserved in their entirety in the Depart- 

 ment of Geology in the British Museum of Natural History, 

 Cromwell Road, London, S.W. 



^ His American friend, Prof. W. H. Dall, paid the last compliment to his 

 labours in the Geological Magazine for September (p. 429). 



