Chapter III: Part 3

Davout's military character was on this, as on many other occasions, interpreted as cruel and rapacious, and he had to defend himself against many attacks upon his conduct at Hamburg. He was a stern disciplinarian, almost the only one of the marshals who exacted rigid and precise obedience from his troops, and consequently his corps was more trustworthy and exact in the performance of its duty than any other. Thus, in the earlier days of the _Grande Armee_, it was always the III. corps which was entrusted with the most difficult part of the work in hand. The same criterion is to be applied to his conduct of civil affairs. His rapacity was in reality Napoleon's, for he gave the same undeviating obedience to superior orders which he enforced in his own subordinates. As for his military talents, he was admitted by his contemporaries and by later judgment to be one of the ablest, perhaps the ablest, of all Napoleon's marshals. On the first restoration he retired into private life, openly displaying his hostility to the Bourbons, and when Napoleon returned from Elba; Davout at once joined him. Appointed minister of war, he reorganized the French army as far as the limited time available permitted, and he was so far indispensable to the war department that Napoleon kept him at Paris during the Waterloo campaign. To what degree his skill and bravery would have altered the fortunes of the campaign of 1815 can only be surmised, but it has been made a ground of criticism against Napoleon that he did not avail himself in the field of the services of the best general he then possessed. Davout directed the gallant, but hopeless, defence of Paris after Waterloo, and was deprived of his marshalate and his titles at the second restoration. When some of his subordinate generals were proscribed, he demanded to be held responsible for their acts, as executed under his orders, and he endeavoured to prevent the condemnation of Ney. After a time the hostility of the Bourbons towards Davout died away, and he was reconciled to the monarchy. In 1817 his rank and titles were restored, and in 1819 he became a member of the chamber of peers. He died at Paris on the 1st of June 1823.

See the marquise de Blocqueville, _Le Marechal Davout raconte par les
siens et lui-meme_ (Paris, 1870-1880, 1887); Chenier, _Davout, duc
d'Auerstadt_ (Paris, 1866).

DAVY, SIR HUMPHRY, Bart. (1778-1829), English chemist, was born on the 17th of December 1778 at or near Penzance in Cornwall. During his school days at the grammar schools of Penzance and Truro he showed few signs of a taste for scientific pursuits or indeed of any special zeal for knowledge or of ability beyond a certain skill in making verse translations from the classics and in story-telling. But when in 1794 his father, Robert Davy, died, leaving a widow and five children in embarrassed circumstances, he awoke to his responsibilities as the eldest son, and becoming apprentice to a surgeon-apothecary at Penzance set to work on a systematic and remarkably wide course of self-instruction which he mapped out for himself in preparation for a career in medicine. Beginning with metaphysics and ethics and passing on to mathematics, he turned to chemistry at the end of 1797, and within a few months of reading Nicholson's and Lavoisier's treatises on that science had produced a new theory of light and heat. About the same time he made the acquaintance of two men of scientific attainments--Gregory Watt (1777-1804), a son of James Watt, and Davies Giddy, afterwards Gilbert (1767-1839), who was president of the Royal Society from 1827 to 1831. By the latter he was recommended to Dr Thomas Beddoes, who was in 1798 establishing his Medical Pneumatic Institution at Bristol for investigating the medicinal properties of various gases. Here Davy, released from his indentures, was installed as superintendent towards the end of 1798. Early next year two papers from his pen were published in Beddoes' _West Country Contributions_--one "On Heat, Light and the Combinations of Light, with a new Theory of Respiration and Observations on the Chemistry of Life," and the other "On the Generation of Phosoxygen (Oxygen gas) and the Causes of the Colours of Organic Beings." These contain an account of the well-known experiment in which he sought to establish the immateriality of heat by showing its generation through the friction of two pieces of ice in an exhausted vessel, and further attempt to prove that light is "matter of a peculiar kind," and that oxygen gas, being a compound of this matter with a simple substance, would more properly be termed phosoxygen. Founded on faulty experiments and reasoning, the views he expressed were either ignored or ridiculed; and it was long before he bitterly regretted the temerity with which he had published his hasty generalizations.

One of his first discoveries at the Pneumatic Institution on the 9th of April 1799 was that pure nitrous oxide (laughing gas) is perfectly respirable, and he narrates that on the next day he became "absolutely intoxicated" through breathing sixteen quarts of it for "near seven minutes." This discovery brought both him and the Pneumatic Institution into prominence. The gas itself was inhaled by Southey and Coleridge among other distinguished people, and promised to become fashionable, while further research yielded Davy material for his _Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide_, published in 1800, which secured his reputation as a chemist. Soon afterwards, Count Rumford, requiring a lecturer on chemistry for the recently established Royal Institution in London, opened negotiations with him, and on the 16th of February 1801 he was engaged as assistant lecturer in chemistry and director of the laboratory. Ten weeks later, having "given satisfactory proofs of his talents" in a course of lectures on galvanism, he was appointed lecturer, and his promotion to be professor followed on the 31st of May 1802. One of the first tasks imposed on him by the managers was the delivery of a course of lectures on the chemical principles of tanning, and he was given leave of absence for July, August and September 1801 in order to acquaint himself practically with the subject. The main facts he discovered from his experiments in this connexion were described before the Royal Society in 1803. In 1802 the board of agriculture requested him to direct his attention to agricultural subjects; and in 1803, with the acquiescence of the Royal Institution, he gave his first course of lectures on agricultural chemistry and continued them for ten successive years, ultimately publishing their substance as _Elements of Agricultural Chemistry_ in 1813. But his chief interest at the Royal Institution was with electro-chemistry. Galvanic phenomena had already engaged his attention before he left Bristol, but in London he had at his disposal a large battery which gave him much greater opportunities. His first communication to the Royal Society, read in June 1801, related to galvanic combinations formed with single metallic plates and fluids, and showed that an electric cell might be constructed with a single metal and two fluids, provided one of the fluids was capable of oxidizing one surface of the metal; previous piles had consisted of two different metals, or of one plate of metal and the other of charcoal, with an interposed fluid. Five years later he delivered before the Royal Society his first Bakerian lecture, "On some Chemical Agencies of Electricity," which J. J. Berzelius described as one of the most remarkable memoirs in the history of chemical theory. He summed up his results in the general statement that "hydrogen, the alkaline substances, the metals and certain metallic oxides are attracted by negatively electrified metallic surfaces, and repelled by positively electrified metallic surfaces; and contrariwise, that oxygen and acid substances are attracted by positively electrified metallic surfaces and repelled by negatively electrified metallic surfaces; and these attractive and repulsive forces are sufficiently energetic to destroy or suspend the usual operation of elective affinity." He also sketched a theory of chemical affinity on the facts he had discovered, and concluded by suggesting that the electric decomposition of neutral salts might in some cases admit of economical applications and lead to the isolation of the true elements of bodies. A year after this paper, which gained him from the French Institute the medal offered by Napoleon for the best experiment made each year on galvanism, he described in his second Bakerian lecture the electrolytic preparation of potassium and sodium, effected in October 1807 by the aid of his battery. According to his cousin, Edmund Davy,[1] then his laboratory assistant, he was so delighted with this achievement that he danced about the room in ecstasy. Four days after reading his lecture his health broke down, and severe illness kept him from his professional duties until March 1808. As soon as he was able to work again he attempted to obtain the metals of the alkaline earths by the same methods as he had used for those of the fixed alkalis, but they eluded his efforts and he only succeeded in preparing them as amalgams with mercury, by a process due to Berzelius. His attempts to decompose "alumine, silica, zircone and glucine" were still less fortunate. At the end of 1808 he read his third Bakerian lecture, one of the longest of his papers but not one of the best. In it he disproved the idea advanced by Gay Lussac that potassium was a compound of hydrogen, not an element; but on the other hand he cast doubts on the elementary character of phosphorus, sulphur and carbon, though on this point he afterwards corrected himself. He also described the preparation of boron, for which at first he proposed the name boracium, on the impression that it was a metal. About this time a voluntary subscription among the members of the Royal Institution put him in possession of a new galvanic battery of 2000 double plates, with a surface equal to 128,000 sq. in., to replace the old one, which had become unserviceable. His fourth Bakerian lecture, in November 1809, gave further proofs of the elementary nature of potassium, and described the properties of telluretted hydrogen. Next year, in a paper read in July and in his fifth Bakerian lecture in November, he argued that oxymuriatic acid, contrary to his previous belief, was a simple body, and proposed for it the name "chlorine."

Davy's reputation was now at its zenith. As a lecturer he could command an audience of little less than 1000 in the theatre of the Royal Institution, and his fame had spread far outside London. In 1810, at the invitation of the Dublin Society, he gave a course of lectures on electro-chemical science, and in the following year he again lectured in Dublin, on chemistry and geology, receiving large fees at both visits. During his second visit Trinity College conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., the only university distinction he ever received. On the 8th of April 1812 he was knighted by the prince regent; on the 9th he gave his farewell lecture as professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution; and on the 11th he was married to Mrs Apreece, daughter and heiress of Charles Kerr of Kelso, and a distant connexion of Sir Walter Scott. A few months after his marriage he published the first and only volume of his _Elements of Chemical Philosophy_, with a dedication to his wife, and was also re-elected professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution, though he would not pledge himself to deliver lectures, explaining that he wished to be free from the routine of lecturing in order to have more time for original work. Towards the end of the year he began to investigate chloride of nitrogen, which had just been discovered by P. L. Dulong, but was obliged to suspend his inquiries during the winter on account of injury to his eye caused by an explosion of that substance. In the spring of 1813 he was engaged on the chemistry of fluorine, and though he failed to isolate the element, he reached accurate conclusions regarding its nature and properties. In October he started with his wife for a continental tour, and with them, as "assistant in experiments and writing," went Michael Faraday, who in the previous March had been engaged as assistant in the Royal Institution laboratory. Having obtained permission from the French emperor to travel in France, he went first to Paris, where during his two months' stay every honour was accorded him, including election as a corresponding member of the first class of the Institute. He does not, however, seem to have reciprocated the courtesy of his French hosts, but gave offence by the brusqueness of his manner, though his supercilious bearing, according to his biographer, Dr Paris, was to be ascribed less to any conscious superiority than to an "ungraceful timidity which he could never conquer." Nor was his action in regard to iodine calculated to conciliate. That substance, recently discovered in Paris, was attracting the attention of French chemists when he stepped in and, after a short examination with his portable chemical laboratory, detected its resemblance to chlorine and pronounced it an "undecompounded body." Towards the end of December he left for Italy. At Genoa he investigated the electricity of the torpedo-fish, and at Florence, by the aid of the great burning-glass in the Accademia del Cimento, he effected the combustion of the diamond in oxygen and decided that, beyond containing a little hydrogen, it consisted of pure carbon. Then he went to Rome and Naples and visited Vesuvius and Pompeii, called on Volta at Milan, spent the summer in Geneva, and returning to Rome occupied the winter with an inquiry into the composition of ancient colours.

A few months after his return, through Germany, to London in 1815, he was induced to take up the question of constructing a miner's safety lamp. Experiments with samples of fire-damp sent from Newcastle soon taught him that "explosive mixtures of mine-damp will not pass through small apertures or tubes"; and in a paper read before the Royal Society on the 9th of November he showed that metallic tubes, being better conductors of heat, were superior to glass ones, and explained that the heat lost by contact with a large cooling surface brought the temperature of the first portions of gas exploded below that required for the firing of the other portions. Two further papers read in January 1816 explained the employment of wire gauze instead of narrow tubes, and later in the year the safety lamps were brought into use in the mines. A large collection of the different models made by Davy in the course of his inquiries is in the possession of the Royal Institution. He took out no patent for his invention, and in recognition of his disinterestedness the Newcastle coal-owners in September 1817 presented him with a dinner-service of silver plate.[2]

In 1818, when he was created a baronet, he was commissioned by the British government to examine the papyri of Herculaneum in the Neapolitan museum, and he did not arrive back in England till June 1820. In November of that year the Royal Society, of which he had become a fellow in 1803, and acted as secretary from 1807 to 1812, chose him as their president, but his personal qualities were not such as to make him very successful in that office, especially in comparison with the tact and firmness of his predecessor, Sir Joseph Banks. In 1821 he was busy with electrical experiments and in 1822 with investigations of the fluids contained in the cavities of crystals in rocks. In 1823, when Faraday liquefied chlorine, he read a paper which suggested the application of liquids formed by the condensation of gases as mechanical agents. In the same year the admiralty consulted the Royal Society as to a means of preserving the copper sheathing of ships from corrosion and keeping it smooth, and he suggested that the copper would be preserved if it were rendered negatively electrical, as would be done by fixing "protectors" of zinc to the sheeting. This method was tried on several ships, but it was found that the bottoms became extremely foul from accumulations of seaweed and shellfish. For this reason the admiralty decided against the plan, much to the inventor's annoyance, especially as orders to remove the protectors already fitted were issued in June 1825, immediately after he had announced to the Royal Society the full success of his remedy.

In 1826 Davy's health, which showed signs of failure in 1823, had so declined that he could with difficulty indulge in his favourite sports of fishing and shooting, and early in 1827, after a slight attack of paralysis, he was ordered abroad. After a short stay at Ravenna he removed to Salzburg, whence, his illness continuing, he sent in his resignation as president of the Royal Society. In the autumn he returned to England and spent his time in writing his _Salmonia or Days of Flyfishing_, an imitation of _The Compleat Angler_. In the spring of 1828 he again left England for Illyria, and in the winter fixed his residence at Rome, whence he sent to the Royal Society his "Remarks on the Electricity of the Torpedo," written at Trieste in October. This, with the exception of a posthumous work, _Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher_ (1830), was the final production of his pen. On the 20th of February 1829 he suffered a second attack of paralysis which rendered his right side quite powerless, but under the care of his brother, Dr John Davy (1791-1868), he rallied sufficiently to be removed to Geneva, where he died on the 29th of May.

Of a sanguine, somewhat irritable temperament, Davy displayed characteristic enthusiasm and energy in all his pursuits. As is shown by his verses and sometimes by his prose, his mind was highly imaginative; the poet Coleridge declared that if he "had not been the first chemist, he would have been the first poet of his age," and Southey said that "he had all the elements of a poet; he only wanted the art." In spite of his ungainly exterior and peculiar manner, his happy gifts of exposition and illustration won him extraordinary popularity as a lecturer, his experiments were ingenious and rapidly performed, and Coleridge went to hear him "to increase his stock of metaphors." The dominating ambition of his life was to achieve fame, but though that sometimes betrayed him into petty jealousy, it did not leave him insensible to the claims on his knowledge of the "cause of humanity," to use a phrase often employed by him in connexion with his invention of the miners' lamp. Of the smaller observances of etiquette he was careless, and his frankness of disposition sometimes exposed him to annoyances which he might have avoided by the exercise of ordinary tact.

See Dr J. A. Paris, _The Life of Sir Humphry Davy_ (1831), vol. ii. of
which on pp. 450-456 gives a list of his publications. Dr John Davy,
_Memoirs of Sir Humphry Davy_ (1836); Collected Works (with shorter
memoir, 1839); _Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific_ (1858).
T. E. Thorpe, _Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher_ (1896).

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Edmund Davy (1785-1857) became professor of chemistry at Cork
Institution in 1813, and at the Royal Dublin Society in 1826. His
son, Edmund William Davy (born in 1826), was appointed professor of
medicine in the Royal College, Dublin, in 1870.

[2] Davy's will directed that this service, after Lady Davy's death,
should pass to his brother, Dr John Davy, on whose decease, if he had
no heirs who could make use of it, it was to be melted and sold, the
proceeds going to the Royal Society "to found a medal to be given
annually for the most important discovery in chemistry anywhere made
in Europe or Anglo-America." The silver produced L736, and the
interest on that sum is expended on the Davy medal, which was awarded
for the first time in 1877, to Bunsen and Kirchhoff for their
discovery of spectrum analysis.

DAWARI, or DAURI, a Pathan tribe on the Waziri border of the North-West Frontier Province of India. The Dawaris inhabit the Tochi Valley (q.v.), otherwise known as Dawar or Daur, and are a homogeneous tribe of considerable size, numbering 5200 fighting men. Though surrounded on all four sides by a Waziri population they bear little resemblance to Waziris. They are an agricultural and the Waziris a pastoral race, and they are much richer than their neighbours. They thrive on a rich sedimentary soil copiously irrigated in the midst of a country where cultivable land of any kind is scarce and water in general hardly to be obtained. But they pay a heavy tax in health and well-being for the possession of their fertile acres. Fevers and other ravaging diseases are bred in the wet sodden lands of the Tochi Valley, lying at the bottom of a deep depression exposed to the burning rays of the sun; and the effects of these ailments may be clearly traced in the drawn or bloated features and the shrunken or swollen limbs of nearly every Dawari that has passed middle life. They have an evil name for indolence, drug-eating and unnatural vices, and are morally the lowest of the Afghan races; but in spite of these defects, and of the contempt with which they are regarded by the other Afghan tribes, they have held their own for centuries against the warlike and hardy Waziris. The secret of this is that the Dawaris stand together, and the Waziris do not, while the weaker race is gifted with infinite patience and tenacity of purpose. With the advent of British government, however, the Dawaris are now secured in the possession of their ancestral lands.

See J. G. Lorimer, _Grammar and Vocabulary of Waziri Pushtu_ (1902).

DAWES, HENRY LAURENS (1816-1903), American lawyer, was born at Cummington, Massachusetts, on the 30th of October 1816. After graduating at Yale in 1839, he taught for a time at Greenfield, Mass., and also edited _The Greenfield Gazette_. In 1842 he was admitted to the bar and began the practice of law at North Adams, where for a time he conducted _The Transcript_. He served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1848-1849 and in 1852, in the state Senate in 1850, and in the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1853. From 1853 to 1857 he was United States district attorney for the western district of Massachusetts; and from 1857-1875 he was a Republican member of the national House of Representatives. In 1875 he succeeded Charles Sumner as senator from Massachusetts, serving until 1893. During this long period of legislative activity he served in the House on the committees on elections, ways and means, and appropriations, took a prominent part in the anti-slavery and reconstruction measures during and after the Civil War, in tariff legislation, and in the establishment of a fish commission and the inauguration of daily weather reports. In the Senate he was chairman of the committee on Indian affairs, and gave much attention to the enactment of laws for the benefit of the Indians. On leaving the Senate, in 1893, he became chairman of the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes (sometimes called the Dawes Indian Commission), and served in this capacity for ten years, negotiating with the tribes for the extinction of the communal title to their land and for the dissolution of the tribal governments, with the object of making the tribes a constituent part of the United States.[1] Dawes died at Pittsfield, Mass., on the 5th of February 1903.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The commission completed its labours on the 1st of July 1905,
after having allotted 20,000,000 acres of land among 90,000 Indians
and absorbed the five Indian governments into the national system.
The "five tribes" were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and
Seminole Indians.

DAWES, RICHARD (1708-1766), English classical scholar, was born in or near Market Bosworth. He was educated at the town grammar school under Anthony Blackwall, and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which society he was elected fellow in 1731. His peculiar habits and outspoken language made him unpopular. His health broke down in consequence of his sedentary life, and it is said that he took to bell-ringing at Great St Mary's as a restorative. He was a bitter enemy of Bentley, who he declared knew nothing of Greek except from indexes. In 1738 Dawes was appointed to the mastership of the grammar school, Newcastle-on-Tyne, combined with that of St Mary's hospital. From all accounts his mind appears to have become unhinged; his eccentricities of conduct and continual disputes with his governing body ruined the school, and finally, in 1749, he resigned his post and retired to Heworth, where he chiefly amused himself with boating. He died on the 21st of March 1766. Dawes was not a prolific writer. The book on which his fame rests is his _Miscellanea critica_ (1745), which gained the commendation of such distinguished continental scholars as L. C. Valckenaer and J. J. Reiske. The _Miscellanea_, which was re-edited by T. Burgess (1781), G. C. Harles (1800) and T. Kidd (1817), for many years enjoyed a high reputation, and although some of the "canons" have been proved untenable and few can be accepted universally, it will always remain an honourable and enduring monument of English scholarship.

See J. Hodgson, _An Account of the Life and Writings of Richard Dawes_
(1828); H. R. Luard in _Dict. of Nat. Biog._; J. E. Sandys, _Hist. of
Classical Scholarship_, ii. 415.

DAWISON, BOGUMIL (1818-1872), German actor, was born at Warsaw, of Jewish parents, and at the age of nineteen went on the stage. In 1839 he received an appointment to the theatre at Lemberg in Galicia. In 1847 he played at Hamburg with marked success, was from 1849 to 1854 a member of the Burg theatre in Vienna, and then became connected with the Dresden court theatre. In 1864 he was given a life engagement, but resigned his appointment, and after starring through Germany visited the United States in 1866. He died in Dresden on the 1st of February 1872. Dawison was considered in Germany an actor of a new type; a leading critic wrote that he and Marie Seebach "swept like fresh gales over dusty tradition, and brushing aside the monotony of declamation gave to their roles more character and vivacity than had hitherto been known on the German stage." His chief parts were Mephistopheles, Franz Moor, Mark Antony, Hamlet, Charles V., Richard III. and King Lear.

DAWKINS, WILLIAM BOYD (1838- ), English geologist and archaeologist, was born at Buttington vicarage near Welshpool, Montgomeryshire, on the 26th of December 1838. Educated at Rossall School and Oxford, he joined the Geological Survey in 1862, and in 1869 became curator of the Manchester museum, a post which he retained till 1890. He was appointed professor of geology and palaeontology in Owens College, Manchester, in 1874. He paid special attention to the question of the existence of coal in Kent, and in 1882 was selected by the Channel tunnel committee to make a special survey of the French and English coasts. He was also employed in the scheme of a tunnel beneath the Humber. His chief distinctions, however, were won in the realms of anthropology by his researches into the lives of the cave-dwellers of prehistoric times, labours which have borne fruit in his books _Cave-hunting_ (1874); _Early Man in Britain_ (1880); _British Pleistocene Mammalia_ (1866-1887). He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1867, and acted as president of the anthropological section of the British Association in 1882 and of the geological section in 1888.

DAWLISH, a watering-place in the Ashburton parliamentary division of Devonshire, England, on the English Channel, near the outflow of the Exe, 12 m. S. of Exeter by the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 4003. It lies on a cove sheltered by two projecting headlands. A small stream which flows through the town is lined on both sides by pleasure-grounds. Dawlish owes its prosperity to the visitors attracted, in spring and early summer, by the warm climate and excellent bathing. An annual pleasure fair is held on Easter Monday, and a regatta in August or September. Until its sale in the 19th century, the site of Dawlish belonged to Exeter cathedral, having been given to the chapter by Leofric, bishop of Exeter, in 1050.

DAWN (the 16th-century form of the earlier "dawing" or "dawning," from an old verb "daw," O. Eng. _dagian_, to become day; cf. Dutch _dagen_, and Ger. _tagen_), the time when light appears (daws) in the sky in the morning. The dawn colours appear in the reverse order of the sunset colours and are due to the same cause. When the sun is lowest in both cases the colour is deep red; this gradually changes through orange to gold and brilliant yellow as the sun approaches the horizon. These colours follow each other in order of refrangibility, reproducing all the colours of the spectrum in order except the blue rays which are scattered in the sky. The colours of the dawn are purer and colder than the sunset colours since there is less dust and moisture in the atmosphere and less consequent sifting of light rays.

DAWSON, GEORGE (1821-1876), English nonconformist divine, was born in London on the 24th of February 1821, and was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and at the university of Glasgow. In 1843 he accepted the pastorate of the Baptist church at Rickmansworth, and in 1844 a similar charge at Mount Zion, Birmingham, where he attracted large congregations by his eloquence and his unconventional views. Desiring freedom from any definite creed, he left the Baptist church and became minister of the "Church of the Saviour," a building erected for him by his supporters. Here he exercised a stimulating and varied ministry for nearly thirty years, gathering round him a congregation of all types and especially of such as found the dogmas of the age distasteful. He had much sympathy with the Unitarian position, but was not himself a Unitarian. Indeed he had no fixed standpoint, and discussed truths and principles from various aspects. His sermons, though not particularly speculative, were unconventional and quickening. He was the friend of Carlyle and Emerson, and did much to popularize their teachings, his influence being conspicuous, especially in his demand for a high ethical standard in everyday life and his insistence on the Christianization of citizenship. He was warmly supported by Dr R. W. Dale, and by J. T. Bunce, editor of _The Birmingham Daily Post_. Both Dawson and Dale were disqualified as ministers from seats on the town council, but both served on the Birmingham school board. Dawson also lectured on English literature at the Midland Institute and helped to found the Shakespeare Memorial library in Birmingham. He died suddenly at King's Norton on the 30th of November 1876. Four volumes of _Sermons_, two of _Prayers_ and two of _Biographical Lectures_ were published after his death.

See _Life_ by H. W. Crosskey (1876) and an article by R. W. Dale in
_The Nineteenth Century_ (August 1877).

DAWSON, SIR JOHN WILLIAM (1820-1899), Canadian geologist, was bom at Pictou, Nova Scotia, on the 30th of October 1820. Of Scottish descent, he went to Edinburgh to complete his education, and graduated at the university in 1842, having gained a knowledge of geology and natural history from Robert Jameson. On his return to Nova Scotia in 1842 he accompanied Sir Charles Lyell on his first visit to that territory. Subsequently he was appointed to the post of superintendent of education (1850-1853); at the same time he entered zealously into the geology of the country, making a special study of the fossil forests of the coal-measures. From these strata, in company with Lyell (during his second visit) in 1852, he obtained the first remains of an "air-breathing reptile" named _Dendrerpeton_. He also described the fossil plants of the Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous rocks of Canada for the Geological Survey of that country (1871-1873). From 1855 to 1893 he was professor of geology and principal of M'Gill University, Montreal, an institution which under his influence attained a high reputation. He was elected F.R.S. in 1862. When the Royal Society of Canada was constituted he was the first to occupy the presidential chair, and he also acted as president of the British Association at its meeting at Birmingham in 1886, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Sir William Dawson's name is especially associated with the _Eozoon canadense_, which in 1864 he described as an organism having the structure of a foraminifer. It was found in the Laurentian rocks, regarded as the oldest known geological system. His views on the subject were contested at the time, and have since been disproved, the so-called organism being now regarded as a mineral structure. He was created C.M.G. in 1881, and was knighted in 1884. In his books on geological subjects he maintained a distinctly theological attitude, declining to admit the descent or evolution of man from brute ancestors, and holding that the human species only made its appearance on this earth within quite recent times. Besides many memoirs in the Transactions of learned societies, he published _Acadian Geology: The geological structure, organic remains and mineral resources of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island_ (1855; ed. 3, 1878); _Air-breathers of the Coal Period_ (1863); _The Story of the Earth and Man_ (1873; ed. 6, 1880); _The Dawn of Life_ (1875); _Fossil Men and their Modern Representatives_ (1880); _Geological History of Plants_ (1888); _The Canadian Ice Age_ (1894). He died on the 20th of November 1899.

His son, GEORGE MERCER DAWSON (1849-1901), was born at Pictou on the 1st of August 1849, and received his education at M'Gill University and the Royal School of Mines, London, where he had a brilliant career. In 1873 he was appointed geologist and naturalist to the North American boundary commission, and two years later he joined the staff of the geological survey of Canada, of which he became assistant director in 1883, and director in 1895. He was in charge of the Canadian government's Yukon expedition in 1887, and his name is permanently written in Dawson City, of gold-bearing fame. As one of the Bering Sea Commissioners he spent the summer of 1891 investigating the facts of the seal fisheries on the northern coasts of Asia and America. For his services there, and at the subsequent arbitration in Paris, he was made a C.M.G. He was elected F.R.S. in 1891, and in the same year was awarded the Bigsby medal by the Geological Society of London. He was president of the Royal Society of Canada in 1893. He died on the 2nd of March 1901. He was the author of many scientific papers and reports, especially on the surface geology and glacial phenomena of the northern and western parts of Canada.

DAWSON CITY, or DAWSON, the capital of the Yukon territory, Canada, on the right bank of the Yukon river, and in the middle of the Klondyke gold region, of which it is the distributing centre. It is situated in beautiful mountainous country, 1400 ft. above the sea, and 1500 m. from the mouth of the Yukon river. It is reached by a fleet of river steamers, and has telegraphic communication. Founded in 1896, its population soon reached over 20,000 at the height of the gold rush; in 1901 it was officially returned as 9142, and is now not more than 5000. The temperature varies from 90 deg. F. in summer to 50 deg. below zero in winter. It possesses three opera-houses and numerous hotels, and is a typical mining town, though even at first there was much less lawlessness than is usually the case in such cities.

DAX, a town of south-western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Landes, 92 m. S.S.W, of Bordeaux, on the Southern railway between that city and Bayonne. Pop. (1906) 8585. The town lies on the left bank of the Adour, a stone bridge uniting it to its suburb of Le Sablar on the right bank. It has remains of ancient Gallo-Roman fortifications, now converted into a promenade. The most remarkable building in the town is the church of Notre-Dame, once a cathedral; it was rebuilt from 1656 to 1719, but still preserves a sacristy, a porch and a fine sculptured doorway of the 13th century. The church of St Vincent, to the south-west of the town, derives its name from the first bishop, whose tomb it contains. The church of St Paul-les-Dax, a suburb on the right bank of the Adour, belongs mainly to the 15th century, and has a Romanesque apse adorned with curious bas-reliefs. On a hill to the west of Dax stands a tower built in memory of the sailor and scientist Jean Charles Borda, born there in 1733; a statue was erected to him in the town in 1891. Dax, which is well known as a winter resort, owes much of its importance to its thermal waters and mud-baths (the deposit of the Adour), which are efficacious in cases of rheumatism, neuralgia and other disorders. The best-known spring is the Fontaine Chaude, which issues into a basin 160 ft. wide in the centre of the town. The principal of numerous bathing establishments are the Grands Thermes, the Bains Sales, adjoining a casino, and the Baignots, which fringe the Adour and are surrounded by gardens. Dax has a sub-prefecture, tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a communal college, a training college and a library. It has salt workings, tanneries, saw-mills, manufactures of soap and corks; commerce is chiefly in the pine wood, resin and cork of the Landes, in mules, cattle, horses and poultry.

Dax (_Aquae Tarbellicae_, _Aquae Augustae_, later _D'Acqs_) was the capital of the Tarbelli under the Roman domination, when its waters were already famous. Later it was the seat of a viscounty, which in the 11th century passed to the viscounts of Bearn, and in 1177 was annexed by Richard Coeur de Lion to Gascony. The bishopric, founded in the 3rd century, was in 1801 attached to that of Aire.

DAY, JOHN (1574-1640?), English dramatist, was born at Cawston, Norfolk, in 1574, and educated at Ely. He became a sizar of Caius College, Cambridge, in 1592, but was expelled in the next year for stealing a book. He became one of Henslowe's playwrights, collaborating with Henry Chettle, William Haughton, Thomas Dekker, Richard Hathway and Wentworth Smith, but his almost incessant activity seems to have left him poor enough, to judge by the small loans, of five shillings and even two shillings, that he obtained from Henslowe. The first play in which Day appears as part-author is _The Conquest of Brute, with the finding of the Bath_ (1598), which, with most of his journeyman's work, is lost. A drama dealing with the early years of the reign of Henry VI., _The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green_ (acted 1600, printed 1659), written in collaboration with Chettle, is his earliest extant work. It bore the sub-title of _The Merry Humor of Tom Strowd, the Norfolk Yeoman_, and was so popular that second and third parts, by Day and Haughton, were produced in the next year. _The Ile of Guls_ (printed 1606), a prose comedy founded upon Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_, contains in its light dialogue much satire to which the key is now lost, but Mr Swinburne notes in Manasses's burlesque of a Puritan sermon a curious anticipation of the eloquence of Mr Chadband in _Bleak House_. In 1607 Day produced, in conjunction with William Rowley and George Wilkins, _The Travailes of the Three English Brothers_, which detailed the adventures of Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony and Robert Shirley.

_The Parliament of Bees_ is the work on which Day's reputation chiefly rests. This exquisite and unique drama, or rather masque, is entirely occupied with "the doings, the births, the wars, the wooings" of bees, expressed in a style at once most singular and most charming. The bees hold a parliament under Prorex, the Master Bee, and various complaints are preferred against the humble-bee, the wasp, the drone and other offenders. This satirical allegory of affairs ends with a royal progress of Oberon, who distributes justice to all. The piece contains much for which parallel passages are found in Dekker's _Wonder of a Kingdom_ (1636) and Samuel Rowley's (or Dekker's) _Noble Soldier_ (printed 1634). There is no earlier known edition of _The Parliament of Bees_ than that in 1641, but a persistent tradition has assigned the piece to 1607. In 1608 Day published two comedies, _Law Trickes, or Who Would have Thought it?_ and _Humour out of Breath_. The date of his death is unknown, but an elegy on him by John Tatham, the city poet, was published in 1640. The six dramas by John Day which we possess show a delicate fancy and dainty inventiveness all his own. He preserved, in a great measure, the dramatic tradition of John Lyly, and affected a kind of subdued euphuism. _The Maydes Metamorphosis_ (1600), once supposed to be a posthumous work of Lyly's, may be an early work of Day's. It possesses, at all events, many of his marked characteristics. His prose _Peregrinatic Scholastica or Learninges Pilgrimage_, dating from his later years, was printed by Mr A. H. Bullen from a MS. of Day's. Considerations partly based on this work have suggested that he had a share in the anonymous _Pilgrimage to Parnassus_ and the _Return from Parnassus_. The beauty and ingenuity of _The Parliament of Bees_ were noted and warmly extolled by Charles Lamb; and Day's work has since found many admirers.

His works, edited by A. H. Bullen, were printed at the Chiswick Press
in 1881. The same editor included _The Maydes Metamorphosis_ in vol.
i. of his _Collection of Old Plays_. _The Parliament of Bees_ and
_Humour out of Breath_ were printed in _Nero and other Plays_ (Mermaid
Series, 1888), with an introduction by Arthur Symons. An appreciation
by Mr A. C. Swinburne appeared in _The Nineteenth Century_ (October
1897).

DAY, THOMAS (1748-1789), British author, was born in London on the 22nd of June 1748. He is famous as the writer of _Sandford and Merton_ (1783-1789), a book for the young, which, though quaintly didactic and often ridiculous, has had considerable educational value as inculcating manliness and independence. Day was educated at the Charterhouse and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and became a great admirer of J. J. Rousseau and his doctrine of the ideal state of nature. Having independent means he devoted himself to a life of study and philanthropy. His views on marriage were typical of the man. He brought up two foundlings, one of whom he hoped eventually to marry. They were educated on the severest principles, but neither acquired the high quality of stoicism which he had looked for. After several proposals of marriage to other ladies had been rejected, he married an heiress who agreed with his ascetic programme of life. He finally settled at Ottershaw in Surrey and took to farming on philanthropic principles. He had many curious and impracticable theories, among them one that all animals could be managed by kindness, and while riding an unbroken colt he was thrown near Wargrave and killed on the 28th of September 1789. His poem _The Dying Negro_, published in 1773, struck the keynote of the anti-slavery movement. It is also obvious from his other works, such as _The Devoted Legions_ (1776) and _The Desolation of America_ (1777), that he strongly sympathized with the Americans during their War of Independence.

DAY (O. Eng. _daeg_, Ger. _Tag_; according to the _New English Dictionary_, "in no way related to the Lat. _dies_"), in astronomy, the interval of time in which a revolution of the earth on its axis is performed. Days are distinguished as solar, sidereal or lunar, according as the revolution is taken relatively to the sun, the stars or the moon. The solar day is the fundamental unit of time, not only in daily life but in astronomical practice. In the latter case, being determined by observations of the sun, it is taken to begin with the passage of the mean sun over the meridian of the place, or at mean noon, while the civil day begins at midnight. A vigorous effort was made during the last fifteen years of the 19th century to bring the two uses into harmony by beginning the astronomical day at midnight. In some isolated cases this has been done; but the general consensus of astronomers has been against it, the day as used in astronomy being only a measure of time, and having no relation to the period of daily repose. The time when the day shall begin is purely a matter of convenience. The present practice being the dominant one from the time of Ptolemy until the present, it was felt that the confusion in the combination of past and present astronomical observations, and the doubts and difficulties in using the astronomical ephemerides, formed a decisive argument against any change.

The question of a possible variability in the length of the day is one of fundamental importance. One necessary effect of the tidal retardation of the earth's rotation is gradually to increase this length. It is remarkable that the discussion of ancient eclipses of the moon, and their comparison with modern observations, show only a small and rather doubtful change, amounting perhaps to less than one-hundredth of a second per century. As this amount seems to be markedly less than that which would be expected from the cause in question, it is probable that some other cause tends to accelerate the earth's rotation and so to shorten the day. The moon's apparent mean motion in longitude seems also to indicate slow periodic changes in the earth's rotation; but these are not confirmed by transits of Mercury, which ought also to indicate them. (See MOON and TIDES.) (S. N.)

_Legal Aspects._--In law, a day may be either a _dies naturalis_ or natural day, or a _dies artificialis_ or artificial day. A natural day includes all the twenty-four hours from midnight to midnight. Fractions of the day are disregarded to avoid dispute, though sometimes the law will consider fractions, as where it is necessary to show the first of two acts. In cases where action must be taken for preserving or asserting a right, a day would mean the natural day of twenty-four hours, but on the other hand, as in cases of survivorship, for testamentary or other purposes, it would suffice if a person survived for even the smallest portion of the last day necessary.

When a statute directs any act to be done within so many days, these words mean _clear days_, i.e. a number of perfect intervening days, not counting the terminal days: if the statute says nothing about Sunday, the days mentioned mean consecutive days and include Sundays. Under some statutes (e.g. the Parliamentary Elections Act 1868, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883) Sundays and holidays are excluded in reckoning days, and consequently all the Sundays, &c., of a prescribed sequence of days would be eliminated. So also, by custom, the word "day" may be understood in some special sense. In bills of lading and charter parties, when "days" or "running days" are spoken of without qualification, they usually mean consecutive days, and Sundays and holidays are counted, but when there is some qualification, as where a charter party required a cargo "to be discharged in fourteen days," "days" will mean _working days_. Working days, again, vary in different ports, and the custom of the port will decide in each case what are working days. In English charter parties, unless the contrary is expressed, Christmas day and other recognized holidays are included as working days. A _weather working day_, a term sometimes used in charter parties, means a day when work is not prevented by the weather, and unless so provided for, a day on which work was rendered impossible by bad weather would still be counted as a working day. _Lay days_, which are days given to the charterer in a charter party either to load or unload without paying for the use of the ship, are days of the week, not periods of twenty-four hours.

_Days of Grace._--When a bill of exchange is not payable at sight or on demand, certain days (called days of grace, from being originally a gratuitous favour) are added to the time of payment as fixed by the bill, and the bill is then due and payable on the last day of grace. In the United Kingdom, by the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, three days are allowed as days of grace, but when the last day of grace falls on Sunday, Christmas day, Good Friday or a day appointed by royal proclamation as a public fast or thanksgiving day, the bill is due and payable on the preceding business day. If the last day of grace is a bank holiday (other than Christmas day or Good Friday), or when the last day of grace is a Sunday, and the second day of grace is a bank holiday, the bill is due and payable on the succeeding business day. Days of grace (_dies non_) are in existence practically among English-speaking peoples only. They were abolished by the French Code (Code de Commerce, Liv. i. tit. 8, art. 135), and by most, if not all, of the European codes since framed.

_Civil Days._--An artificial or civil day is, to a certain extent, difficult to define; it "may be regarded as a convenient term to signify all the various kinds of 'day' known in legal proceedings other than the natural day." (_Ency. English Law_, tit. "Day"). The Jews, Chaldeans and Babylonians began the day at the rising of the sun; the Athenians at the fall; the Umbri in Italy began at midday; the Egyptians and Romans at midnight; and in England, the United States and most of the countries of Europe the Roman civil day still prevails, the day usually commencing as soon as the clock begins to strike 12 P.M. of the preceding day.

In England the period of the civil day may also vary under different statutes. In criminal law the day formerly commenced at sunrise and extended to sunset, but by the Larceny Act 1861 the day is that period between six in the morning and nine in the evening. The same period of time comprises a day under the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1885 and the Public Health (London) Act 1891, but under the Public Health (Scotland) Act 1897 "day" is the period between 9 A.M. and 6 P.M. By an act of 1845, regulating the labour of children in print-works, "day" is defined as from 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. Daytime, within which distress for rent must be made, is from sunrise to sunset (_Tulton_ v. _Darke_, 1860, 2 L.T. 361). An obligation to pay money on a certain day is theoretically discharged if the money is paid before midnight of the day on which it falls due, but custom has so far modified this that the law requires reasonable hours to be observed. If, for instance, payment has to be made at a bank or place of business, it must be within business hours.

When an act of parliament is expressed to come into operation on a certain day, it is to be construed as coming into operation on the expiration of the previous day (Interpretation Act 1889, S 36; Statutes [Definition of Time] Act 1880).

Under the orders of the supreme court the word "day" has two meanings. For purposes of personal service of writs, it means any time of the day or night on week-days, but excludes the time from twelve midnight on Saturday till twelve midnight on Sunday. For purposes of service not required to be personal, it means before six o'clock on any week-day except Saturday, and before 2 P.M. on Saturday.

_Closed Days_, i.e. Sunday, Christmas day and Good Friday, are excluded from all fixtures of time less than six days: otherwise they are included, unless the last day of the time fixed falls on one of those days (R.S.C., O. lxiv.).

_American Practice._--In the United States a day is the space of time between midnight and midnight. The law pays no regard to fractions of a day except to prevent injustice. A "day's work" is by statute in New York fixed at eight hours for all employees except farm and domestic servants, and for employees on railroads at ten hours (Laws 1897, ch. 415). In the recording acts relating to real property, fractions of a day are of the utmost importance, and all deeds, mortgages and other instruments affecting the property, take precedence in the order in which they were filed for record. Days of grace are abolished in many of the seventeen states in which the Negotiable Instruments law has been enacted. Sundays and public holidays are usually excluded in computing time if they are the last day within which the act was to be done. General public holidays throughout the United States are Christmas, Thanksgiving (last Thursday in November) and Independence (July 4th) days and Washington's birthday (February 22nd). The several states have also certain local public holidays. (See also MONTH; TIME.) (T. A. I.)