THE 
AMERICAN GEOL0^4-5^,^ 
Vol. XXI. JANUARY, 1898. NoTi^., 
— =— — =— =^=^^= '"^ 
JOSEPH FRANCIS JAMES. 
1 857-1897. 
By G. K. Gilbert, Washington. 
(Plate I.) 
Joseph Francis James was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb- 
ruary 8, 1857. He died in Hingham, Massachusetts, March 
29, 1897. His father, Uriah Pierson James, a bookseller and 
publisher of Cincinnati, devoted his leisure to scientific work, 
chiefly the collection and study of the fossils of the Cincin- 
nati group. As a boy Joseph was his father's companion on 
collecting rambles and his scientific bent was thus early ac- 
quired. Under his father's guidance he added the collecting of 
living plants to the collecting of fossils, and his first publica- 
tions were in the field of botany. Notes on rare or abnormal 
plants appeared in the Botanical Gazette in 1877 and 1879, but 
he had already, at the age of sixteen, made a catalogue of the 
local flora, which was afterward publisht by the Cincinnati 
Society of Natural History. 
In 1879 he removed to Los Angeles, California, where he 
engaged in business and intended to make his permanent 
home, but his plans were deranged by a disastrous fire and 
finally abandoned. He then joined a railway construction 
force and traveled through southern California, New Mexico 
and Arizona, returning to San Francisco. This slow journey 
in a land strongly contrasted, as to scenery and climate, with 
the Ohio valley was an important factor in his education, and 
^vas peculiarly effective in broadening his view of the relation 
