X. Notice of the late Dr. Thomas Davidson, F.R.S., F.G.S., hon. mem.

Abstract

I am very sorry to have to ask you this evening to allow me to place upon record the great loss that this Society, and the geological world in general, have sustained in the death, on the 14th October last, in the 69th year of his age, of our highly distinguished honorary member, Dr. Thomas Davidson, F.R.S., of Muirhouse, Midlothian, at his residence, 9 Salisbury Road, West Brighton. Dr. Davidson was elected the first honorary member of our Society in 1859, the second year of its existence. It was in the year 1856, when he began to gather material for his monograph on the Carboniferous Brachiopoda of the British Isles, that the members first made his acquaintance. Previous to this he had completed between the years 1851 and 1854 the first quarto volume of British Brachiopoda for the Palæontographical Society, comprising the Tertiary and Secondary species. At that time I was residing at Lennoxtown, Campsie, and Dr. Davidson wrote to see if I could assist him by the loan of Scottish Carboniferous Brachiopoda from my own collection, and by giving him the names of other collectors whom I knew to be possessed of specimens. This I was very willing to do, and the correspondence then opened up only closed with death, his last letter being dated 8th October, 1885, the week before his decease. During this long interval of twenty-nine years very many letters had passed between us, and all relating to his great work above mentioned. It makes me This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract