46 PKOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May 1 894, 



and perseverance, lie raised it to a prosperous and useful condition, 

 whilst the number of its members was nearly quadrupled. At the 

 jubilee meeting of the Society, held in Ripon in 1888, the oppor- 

 tunity was seized to present Mr. Davis with some mark of the 

 esteem in which he was personally held by the members, and also 

 in part recognition of his great services as honorary secretary and 

 editor of the ' Proceedings.' It is scarcely necessary to add that 

 Mr. Davis himself was a large contributor to those ' Proceedings ' ; 

 and in 1889 he wrote the history of the Society, constituting the 

 bulk of the tenth volume. He was also an active member of the 

 Yorkshire Naturalists' Union, nor must his work on the Geology of 

 West Yorkshire, in conjunction with Mr. Lees, be forgotten. 



Mr. Davis became a member of the British Association in 1873, 

 and was a permanent member of their General Committee. His 

 communication on the Exploration of a Fissure in the Mountain 

 Limestone of llaygill was published in the Report for 1881, a fuller 

 account being given in the Proceedings of his own Society. It was 

 about this time that I had the pleasure of making Mr. Davis's 

 acquaintance, which speedily led to our undertaking the joint 

 directorship of the midsummer excursion of the Geologists' Asso- 

 ciation of London to the West Riding, where the Eaygill fissure 

 was to be one of the objects of investigation. This was in 1882, 

 when I first learnt to appreciate Mr. Davis's methods and his 

 knowledge of the geology of the Craven district. At that time he 

 was especially interested in the group of erratics near Norber. 



That Mr. Davis was not idle as a scientific writer may be inferred 

 from the fact that a list of 56 memoirs and papers of his is given in 

 the last volume of the ' Geological Magazine ' (1893), several of them 

 having appeared originally in its numbers. But this is only one 

 side of the picture ; for Mr. Davis had a civic career such as few 

 subjects of Her Majesty ever attain to. For many years he was 

 distinguished as a public man, and especially as an advocate of 

 technical education ; and not content with promoting Mechanics' 

 Institutes and Halls, he even commenced an agitation to form a York- 

 shire Fine Art Society, of which for some years he was secretary. 

 His house at Chevinedge, near Halifax, is said to have been rich in 

 the treasures both of science and art, and he had also got together 

 a considerable library. Anything rare or novel he was ready 

 to lend to the Halifax Museum or other local exhibitions ; and 

 it is almost unnecessary to say that he took great interest in the 

 Scientific Society of that town, of which society he was at one time 

 President. 



