14 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ALBANY JVCEETING 



MEMORIAL OF CHARLES A. DAVIS 



BY ALFRED C. LANE 



CONTENTS 



Page 



Early life 14 



At Alma 15 



Vegetal origin of limestones 10 



At Ann Arbor . -. 23 



Expert on peat 26 



Transfer to Washington 30 



Bibliography 38 



Early Life 



Geology is the record of how things came to be as the}' are, and so to 

 me one of the most interesting things abont any savant is how he came 

 to be one. 



Prof. Charles iVlbert Davis came into this life at Portsmouth, New 

 Hampshire, on September 29, 1861, as the son of Lewis Gilman Davis 

 and Frances Syrena Peirce, of old New England stock. His mother as a 

 girl lived next door to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in an old honse in Ports- 

 month which had been a block-honse, and used to ride on that ^^bad 

 boy's^' iponj, "Gypsy.^' His father came from Durham, New Hampshire, 

 and was a descendant of the family after which Gilmanton, New Hamp- 

 shire, was named. His parents were both fond of outdoors and of long 

 walks in the woods, and even after they were fifty years old used to take 

 ten-mile tramps on Sundays to "rest them up.'' 



His father had one of the show flower gardens of Portsmouth, and used 

 to get up before 4 in the morning in order to cultivate it without neglect- 

 ing his photographic business, which was one of the best in Portsmouth. 



When Charles was only two years old his parents began to take the 

 future scientist with them, and so his training in the recognition of plants 

 and other objects started very early in life. By the time he was eight or 

 nine years of age he was oft' on trips with boys, but he never was fond of 

 hunting. On the first trip he made to hunt with a rifle, as he raised the 

 weapon to aim a bird came and sat on the barrel. That exhibition of 

 confidence disarmed him and he never went shooting thereafter. He was 

 very fond of cats, and in Michigan some very intelligent Angoras were 

 members of the family. 



He went through the Portsmouth public schools, graduating from the 

 high school when but sixteen. Then he worked three years in the photo- 

 graphic studio of his father, obtaining a knowledge of photography and 

 chemicals of much use to him all his life. But the love of learning was 



