1911-12.] 
Obituary Notices. 
475 
OBITUARY NOTICES. 
David Harris, F.S.S. By Professor David Fraser Harris. 
(Read January 6, 1913.) 
David Harris, F.S.S., was born at Dunster, Somerset, in June 1842. He 
came to Edinburgh in 1863 as manager in Scotland of the British Medical 
and General Life Association and the Britannia Fire Association, which 
companies flourished greatly under his management. In 1869 Mr Harris, 
then a Fellow of the Statistical Society, published an address on the 
“ Principles and Bonus Appropriations of Life Assurance,” a paper received 
with much interest. 
In 1872 Mr Harris was invited to join the late Mr A. B. Fleming of 
Hillwood, Corstorphine, in the business undertaking which in a few years 
became Messrs A. B. Fleming & Co., Ltd., Caroline Park, Granton. As 
managing director of this company he notably increased the volume 
of its business. Although not a chemist, he was deeply interested in 
the chemical problems bound up with the purification of lubricating 
oils of mineral, vegetable, and animal origin, as also in the manufacture 
of black and of coloured printing inks, for which his firm was famous. 
He studied carefully the principles of trichromatic printing, and w r as 
closely associated with those who in this country developed the 
technique of this beautiful process. His services to the printing trade 
were acknowledged by the printers and lithographers of Edinburgh 
themselves presenting him with an illuminated address. 
Mr Harris was a Fellow of the Society of Arts and a member of the 
Society of Chemical Industry, and was for many years a member of the 
Parish Council of the Parish of Cramond. 
As one of the directors of the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, Mr 
Harris published in 1885 a pamphlet entitled, “ Depression of Trade and 
National Progress and Prosperity, viewed in the Light of Statistics,” 
which drew forth a good deal of favourable comment at the time. As 
a member of the Chamber of Commerce, he served for a number of years 
on the Board of Managers of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and while 
holding this position drew up a statistical analysis of the income and 
expenditure of that noble charity. 
No account would be complete without some allusion to Mr Harris’s 
