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His tastes were simple. He was a great walker, often setting out byhimself to walk twenty or thirty miles. It was, no doubt, his enjoyment ofthe open air and the beauties of the countryside which attracted him tothe Geologists' Association and he attended many of its Field Meetings. Hewas a Life Member. It was largely due to his help that the Midland Groupwas formed in 1937.

Though somewhat austere and stern in appearance no one had a kinderheart and many of his friends remember gratefully the help and encourage­ment he so often gave them.

Mr. Smith was cremated in Edinburgh, where he had settled on hisretirement, but by his own wish his ashes were scattered on the green atStivichall near Coventry, a hamlet he had been instrumental in preserving.

Mr. Smith leaves a widow and a son, who is farming in Scotland.A.L.L.

SIR ARTHUR E. TRUEMAN died in what we now look upon as merely middleage. Yet in his sixty-one years he had achieved great things and manyhonours which would justifiably cause those who had never met him tothink of him as at least an octogenarian. Most members of the Geologists'Association, which he joined in 1919, already know the factual highlightsof his career and it is, therefore, only necessary to refer to these very brieflyhere.

Trueman was born at Nottingham in April 1894 and was educated atHigh Pavement School and University College, Nottingham. He graduatedin 1914 with first-class honours in geology and then took his M.Sc. twoyears later and his D .Sc. in 1918. He was appointed an Assistant Lecturerat University College, Cardiff, in 1917 and three years later became thehead of the new geology department at University College, Swansea. In1930 he was given the professorship of what had, by this time, grown underhis guidance into the combined department of geology and geography. In1933 he accepted the Chaning Wills Chair in Geology at the University ofBristol and in 1937 he moved from there to Glasgow as Professor ofGeology. In 1946 he was appointed full-time deputy-chairman of theUniversity Grants Committee and became its chairman in 1949. He wascompelled by ill-health to resign from the latter post in 1953. Trueman wasthe recipient of the Murchison Fund of the Geological Society of Londonin 1925, the Bigsby Medal in 1939 and the Wollaston Medal in 1955. Hewas awarded the Gold Medal of the South Wales Institute of Engineersin 1933. In 1942 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society andwas President of the Geological Society from 1945-7 and President ofSection C of the British Association in 1948. He was chairman of theGeological Survey Board for over ten years (1943-54). In 1951 he wascreated K.B.E. He was also an Honorary LL.D. of four universities, viz.

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Rhodes, Glasgow, Leeds and Wales. He served as a member of the ElliottCommission on Higher Education in West Africa (1943-4).

As a student Trueman came under the influence of Professor H. H.Swinnerton, who cultivated his early interest in the natural sciences andguided it into the field of palaeontology in which he was later to attaingreat eminence. His initial researches on the fauna and stratigraphy ofJurassic rocks were given an impetus by his contacts with such amateurgeologists as Buckman and Tutcher. His work on the Lias and his variedpalaeontological studies of ammonites, gastropods and the lamellibranchGryphaea brought him right to the forefront as a palaeontologist while yetvery young. Although as time went on he became renowned for his workon the Coal Measures he never lost interest in these early fields of studyand from time to time in later years he published, for example, papers onevolutionary problems related to Gryphaea and also the Lias of Skye. Hispapers in the wider realm of palaeontology on such subjects as lineage andorthogenesis were also linked with these early detailed studies.

His appointments in South Wales brought him into direct contact withthe Coal Measures. With the knowledge and technique acquired from hisearlier work and the initial guidance of practical mining engineers, suchas J. H. Davies, who had noted by collecting fossils of non-marine lamel­libranchs, that types were indicative of stratigraphical horizons, Truemanembarked on the researches which made him world famous and establisheda zonal succession in Coal Measures which enabled the identification andcorrelation of coal seams to be determined over wide areas. His subsequentwork, much of which was accomplished in collaboration with his researchstudents and his other colleagues in the coalfields, covered wider aspectsof Coal Measures geology than the palaeontological successions. Hispaper jointly with Emily Dix and D. Farr Davies on 'Boreholes in Cwm­gorse Valley', published in 1928 by the South Wales Institute of Engineers,was probably the means by which the great economic value of his palaeon­tological discoveries were first fully recognised by the coal mining industry.In this connection it is interesting to note that the National Coal Board arenow sinking the shafts of an important new anthracite mine (AbernantColliery) at the site of these boreholes which were drilled thirty years ago.This new mine might in some ways be regarded as a worthy memorial toTrueman's work in South Wales. The publication in 1954 of the compre­hensive book The Coalfields of Great Britain, edited and partly written byhim, was a fitting culmination to the work which he pioneered.

Sir Franklin Sibly, who was head of the geology department at Cardiffduring part of Trueman's period there as a young lecturer and was Prin­cipal of University College, Swansea, in the period 1920--6, was possiblythe first to appreciate fully Trueman's great ability as a teacher andadministrator. Many of his old students at Swansea, Bristol and Glasgow

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are today famous geologists; they as well as their lesser-known contem­poraries readily acknowledge their great indebtedness to Trueman for theenthusiasm with which he inspired them early in their careers. He had agreat gift for explaining complex matters simply and of getting down to thecrux of a problem. He was always happy and ready to help and encourageamateur organisations by giving lectures, leading field excursions andacting as editor or secretary or treasurer. He published books on geologyfor school-children and a textbook for the more advanced pupils atgrammar schools. In the field he would always illustrate the relations ofgeological features to scenery and landscape and thereby make the subjectvery much alive and real, particularly to the non-specialist. Members ofthe Geologists' Association who attended Field Meetings under his direc­tion can recall vividly his abilities in this direction, e.g, excursions to theCardiff District (1920), Swansea District (1924) and the GloucesterDistrict (1934). Arising initially from lectures and field excursions whichhe organised in the Bristol region he wrote a book on the Scenery ofEngland and Wales, illustrated to a great extent by his own drawings. Hisnatural and quiet wit livened his discourses and his ability to provokeoriginal ideas frequently turned his lectures to Honours students intodiscussion classes which instilled a real and deep interest in the topics, anda will to do original research. He never lost interest in his past students andtook great delight in maintaining contact with them, especially with thoseof his early days; it did not matter whether they had attained fame orwere relative failures, they were always his personal friends.

Trueman had an artistic hand and mind. His illustrations, whether offossils or of landscape, either in publications or on the blackboard, werealways a joy to behold. Many of his friends treasure the originallyillustrated Christmas cards which they received from him year by year. Inhis later years in particular he derived a lot of pleasure from water-colourpainting of landscapes and from the subsequent joy it gave friends toreceive these beautiful pictures as presents.

Trueman's duties as deputy chairman, and later as chairman, of theUniversity Grants Committee in the crucial post-war years, when schemesof vital importance in the expansion and development of British universitieswere being evolved, were exceptionally heavy. His organising ability,breadth of outlook, power of leadership and high integrity helped greatlyto get these schemes formulated. In the words of Sir Emrys Evans incommending him for the Honorary LL.D. Degree of the University ofWales, 'There is no British University that would not freely acknowledgeits debt to him'. Under the continued strain, however, his health gave wayand despite his courage and determination he had ultimately to resign theseposts.

Even in his suffering and with illness gradually but relentlessly paralysing

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him he turned again to geology and obtained much pleasure from reading,writing and editing works on the subject, but his joint monograph withJohn Weir on Upper Carboniferous mussels, although well advanced, wasnot completed by the time of his death. Those of us who saw him orreceived letters from him during the latter part of his illness could noticethat alert and brilliant mind still active and endeavouring to conquer thephysical disabilities which were now upon him. In those last years ofinfirmity he was blessed with the constant care and attention of LadyTrueman who was always there beside him. Their only son, Mr. E. R.Trueman, is on the staff of the Zoological Department at the University ofHull. Trueman died on 5 January 1956. R.O.I.

ARTHUR GEORGE DAVIS, whose name comes to mind whenever mention ismade of the British Eocene, was born at Beckenham, Kent, on 14 March1892, and lived in this district all his life, except during service in the RoyalNaval Air Service during the first world war and in industry during thesecond. As a boy he attended the local school until the age of fourteen;this was his only formal education, but he showed a vivid and burninginterest in natural history, and came to know and collect the plants, insectsand fossils still to be found in a countryside not yet built up into GreaterLondon. On leaving school he entered the family business, being apprenti­ced as a carpenter, but his interest in natural history, particularly fossils,continued to grow, in spite of very little encouragement of any kind.

It was at this period that he timidly showed at the Croydon NaturalHistory Society, his collection of flint sponges from the Chalk to theveteran palaeontologist G. J. Hinde, who was known to young Davis fromhis monographs, of which he had already acquired second-hand copies.Alas! the great man confessed that he had long ceased his studies of thesefossils, and years afterwards Davis told the writer of his intense disap­pointment.

During the 1914-18 war Davis was for a time stationed at Minster in theIsle of Sheppey, Kent, and it was there that he made the acquaintance ofthe famous coast-section of London Clay, the London geologist's owntype-section, with which he was to be so intimately associated in his latercareer. Challenged by a sentry (as was the writer many years later) fortrespassing on a forbidden zone of the cliffs and foreshore, young Daviswas brought before an officer, who having heard his explanation, told himbrusquely that an airman's eyes should be looking skywards, not towardsthe ground, and then dismissed him.

After the war he commenced his studies of the Chalk microfossils ofSurrey, but soon became attracted to the Eocene through the influenceof the late Arthur Wrigley. Together the two began a revision and re­investigation of the palaeontology and associated problems of the British