Vol. 50.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 45 



was one of trie successful students at the Haley Hill College, having 

 taken the Society of Arts' silver medal for chemistry. This kind 

 of training was eminently suitable for the dyeing business, in 

 which his family was engaged ; but these matters did not absorb 

 the whole of young Davis's attention. "When quite a schoolboy he 

 began collecting objects of natural history, and at a very early age 

 was elected secretary of the Leeds Naturalists' Society. And thus it 

 was that, throughout the whole of his most active life, business and 

 science were always combined, and he generally managed to do 

 ample justice to both. 



Mr. Davis was about 27 years of age when, after having devoted 

 some time to archaeological and antiquarian pursuits, he joined this 

 Society in 1873. He had now become a confirmed geologist and 

 palaeontologist, and during the twenty years that he was a Fellow 

 of the Geological Society contributed at least nine papers to its 

 ' Proceedings,' — the first, in 1876, having been on a " Bone-bed in the 

 Lower Coal-measures, with an Enumeration of the Fish-remains of 

 which it is principally composed." His contributions to our own 

 publications, in fact, related chiefly to fishes of Carboniferous age, 

 which he had made his especial study. 



Among his contributions on fossil ichthyology to various other 

 scientific societies may be mentioned the monographs published by 

 the Royal Dublin Society — ' On the Fossil Fishes of the Mountain 

 Limestone of Great Britain ' (1883) ; ' On the Fossil Fishes of the 

 Chalk of Mount Lebanon and Syria ' (1887) ; and ' On the Fossil 

 Fishes of the Tertiary and Cretaceo-Tertiary Formations of New 

 Zealand' (1888). In order to bring out such works as these 

 their Author, besides drawing on the resources of his own splendid 

 collection and on those of the museums of this country, was in the 

 habit of travelling extensively abroad, visiting museums, it may be 

 said, almost all over Europe. Of his energy and enthusiasm in the 

 cause there can be no doubt whatever, but if palaeontology is year 

 by year getting more into the hands of the trained specialist, this is 

 emphatically the case with such obscure and difficult subjects as are 

 presented by the fossil vertebrata of the older formations. 



We must now consider Davis as a geologist, more especially 

 in connexion with his native county. It was owing to his exertions 

 that the Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society became an 

 important and useful body. Some twenty years ago that Society 

 was on the verge of dissolution. The advent of Mr. Davis to the 

 secretaryship changed this state of affairs, and, by dint of enthusiasm 



