Sir John Evans, K.C.B. hi 
of the partners, and in course of time he in turn became the senior member 
of the firm. To those who met him only in his business relations he wa# an 
active and enlightened paper-maker, keenly alive to every modern improve- 
ment in machinery and in the processes of manufacture, gifted with great 
clearness of judgment and remarkable capacity for mastering the most 
complicated details of business. His energy and initiative largely con- 
tributed to the success of the various enterprises of the firm. For many 
years he was President of the Paper Makers’ Association, and took a 
leading part in the conduct of its affairs. 
But while thus sedulously attentive to commerce he found leisure to 
gratify his strong bent towards the study and collection of antiquities and 
the prosecution of several branches of scientific enquiry. His taste for 
geology seems to have been developed even in boyhood, for he is said, when 
nine years old, to have hammered a collection of fossils out of the Wenlock 
limestone quarries at Dudley. But his geological proclivities were eventually 
drawn in two main directions, partly by the requirements of his business and 
partly by his love of antiquities. In paper-making an ample water supply is 
essential, and in Hertfordshire the subject of water-rights has long been 
keenly discussed. Evans, in the interest of his firm, studied the question of 
water-supply, both from the geological and the meteorological side, and he 
became on these matters a recognised authority, whose advice was often 
sought and always valued. No one stood up more stoutly and successfully 
than he for the conservation of the water-supply of his county, which was again 
and again threatened by the great metropolitan water companies. This 
important question being thus forced on his attention by pressing practical 
considerations, he devoted much time to its study. He explored the super- 
ficial deposits in all parts of his district as well as the water-bearing strata 
that lie deeper underground. In the course of these enquiries he was led to 
investigate the relations between rainfall and evaporation, and the percolation 
of rain through soil—subjects regarding which little information was available 
at the time when he began his researches. From the year 1853 he had under 
his own immediate care the rain-gauges and percolation-gauges which had 
been erected at Nash Mills in 1836 by his uncle. 
He was drawn into the geological field by another and different pathway. 
In the first decade of the latter half of last century the discovery of what 
were alleged to be implements of human fabrication in the old river gravels 
of the north of France gave rise to a keen discussion among men of science. 
The conclusion, which some of the early observers drew from the evidence, 
that man must have lived on the earth for a far longer period than had 
generally been supposed, naturally aroused much interest among the general 
public. As far back as 1841 Boucher de Perthes had obtained from the 
old gravel terraces of the valley of the Somme, at Abbeville, numerous 
chipped flints which he recognised to be the handiwork of man. In 1847 he 
began to publish his observations, but they met with little or no support 
among his fellow countrymen. On the contrary, they were either ignored or 
