JAMES WILLIAM DAVIS. 
32i 
does excellent local work under the title of the Halifax Scientific 
Society. This, however, was not sufficient for the energetic 
personality of our friend, who began to add to the verification of the 
facts contained in Geological Text Books and Manuals, the practical 
study in the field of the phenomena presented by the cliffs, hills, 
mountains, and dales of his own county. For several years scarcely 
a week passed without journeys to one part or another of the county, 
observing, taking notes, making diagrams and sketches, and the 
whole culminated in the publication of his Geology and Botany of 
West Yorkshire, the Botanical portion of the work being written by 
Dr. P. Arnold Lees. 
When the British Association held its annual meeting at Brad- 
ford, Mr. Davis became a member, and came into contact with the 
late Professor Philips, Dr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, and other distinguished 
scientists, who fanned the flame of his increasing ardour for scientific 
work. From this time forward he attended most meetings of the 
Association, where he gathered around him a genial and friendly 
company of those like-minded with himself ; he contributed papers 
almost yearly, and became an active member of Section C. The 
following year at the Belfast meeting he made the acquaintance of 
the late Lord Enniskillen and the late Sir Philip Egerton, who were 
attracted by his enthusiasm for their own special branch of palaeon- 
tology, and who showed their friendly regard by laying open their 
rich cabinets for his study and heartily encouraging him in his work, 
and thus helped to confirm him in those Ichthyological researches 
which became his special department of scientific investigation. 
What he managed to accomplish in this kind of work, notwith- 
standing scant leisure and amid a crowd of business, social, educa- 
tional, and municipal engagements, is permanently recorded in his 
numerous contributions to the British Association Reports ; the 
Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society ; 
the Journal of the Geological Society of London ; and particularly in 
the monographs published by the Royal Society of Dublin, viz., 
" On the Fossil Fishes of the Mountain Limestone of Great Britain w 
(1883) ; "On the Fossil Fishes of the Chalk of Mount Lebanon and 
Syria" (1887); and "On the Fossil Fishes of the Tertiary and 
