282 Uriah Pierson James. 
typers and type-founders, the firm name being J. A. & U. P. 
James. The business increased rapidly, book publishing be- 
came a prominent part of it, and the firm became widely 
known throughout the Mississippi valley as the " Harpers of 
the West." Many of the books published by the firm and 
later by Mr. James himself have had a very wide circulation. 
The " James's River Guide," and the " Western Pilot," were 
standard works among river men on the Ohio and Mississ- 
ippi rivers. These books contained charts of the river chan- 
nels, and accounts of the cities and towns along their banks, 
and they were considered so accurate that in several in- 
stances they were used to settle disputed points in the courts. 
He published an edition of "Vestiges of Creation" soon 
after that celebrated book first appeared. He was a patron of 
many of the early authors of the west, and was the means, of 
1)ringing many of them before a very wide circle of readers. 
For many years he edited and published the " Farmer's and 
Mechanic's Almanac," long considered a standard among 
the farmers, who looked upon its predictions of the 
weather, with the greatest respect and confidence. The flood 
of patent medicine almanacs and calendars finally made this 
unprofitable and its publication was discontinued in 1869. 
As a business man his reputation was of the highest. He 
never failed to meet an obligation ; he always preferred to pay 
cash rather than ask for credit ; he never entered into a law- 
suit if it were possible to avoid it, and he w^ould rather have 
been defrauded a hundred times than defraud any man once. 
Turning to his scientific life we find that soon after going to 
Cincinnati his attention was attracted to the wonderful pro- 
fusion of fossils on the hills around the city. He has fre- 
(luently stated that in his walks he often picked up pockets- 
ful of the fragments of coral that lay upon the ground, and at 
first w^ondered if they were twigs of trees turned to stone. His 
early love for geology never left him, and up to within a few 
months of his death he was adding to his collection of fossils. 
He was thus among the very first of all the fossil collectors 
of Cincinnati and was also almost the last of that early gener- 
ation of students and collectors. He was a companion of 
John Locke, John G. Anthony, George Graham, Robert 
Buchanan, Dr. John A. Warder, Edw'd. P. Cranch, S. T. Carley, 
Joseph Clark and many others, all but two of these having 
