NORMAN DAVEY.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—May I be allowed a few lines to ask the possible help of your readers in a subject which interests me ? In the December number of the Fortnightly Review is an article entitled " Sunlight, Pure Air and Smoke Abatement," by that well-known technical expert, Mr. J. B. C. Kershaw. In the course of this article occurs the following sentence :— " Probably Norman Davey, who lived and wrote in the latter part of the eighteenth century, was the first scientific man who clearly recognized the value of sunlight, and his panegyric of the blessings of sunlight is worth quoting here." (There follow six lines of quotation.) I am unable to identify this eighteenth century scientist or to find reference to him in any other place. There is, of course, the modern novelist of the same name, in one of whose books (oddly enough) is a passage bearing very close resemblance to that quoted by Mr. Kershaw, but it would seem improbable that so eminent a technical authority writing in a periodical of the standing of tin Fortnightly Review should refer with respect to a scientist whose exist- ence cannot be substantiated.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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