James

inence in the early history of the American colo-
nies. A paternal ancestor, David James, an
emigrant from Wales, bought land from William
Penn in 1682, and settled at Radnor. James's
grandfather on the maternal side, Thomas Potts,
attained the rank of colonel in the Continental
Army and was active in public affairs at the time
of the formation of the new government. A few
years after his marriage at Radnor, Isaac James
moved his family to a place near Trenton, N. J.,
where there were better facilities for educating
his two sons, of whom Thomas was the younger.
Financial reverses prevented his sending them
to Princeton, as had been planned, and they be-
gan early to support themselves. They studied
pharmacy, and in 1831 started a wholesale drug
business in Philadelphia, which they continued
for thirty-five years. Thomas studied medicine
also, and w'as for many years professor and ex-
aminer in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy.
He probably found his first notable interest in
botany while studying the materia medica, and
soon saw in the higher cryptogams (mosses and
liverworts) a fertile field for original investiga-
tion.

In 1851 he married Isabella Batchelder, at
Cambridge, Mass. Mrs. James had a natural in-
terest in botanical science and proved to be en-
tirely sympathetic and helpful in all of her hus-
band's work. In 1866 James was able to sell out
his share of the drug business and move to Cam-
bridge, where he lived the remainder of his life,
devoting all his time to his study of mosses.

His earlier works included a section on mosses
and liverworts in Dr. William Darlington's third
edition of Flora Cestrica (1853); an article on
the flora of Delaware County, Pa., in Dr. George
Smith's history of that county (1862); "An
Enumeration of the Mosses Detected in the
Northern United States, which are not Com-
prised in the Manual of Asa Gray, M.D.," in
Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences
of Philadelphia, vol. VII (1856); and a list of
mosses in J. T. Rothrock's "Sketch of the Flora
of Alaska" (Smithsonian Report for 1867). He
published a catalogue of western mosses in Vol.
V (1871) of the Report of the Geological Ex-
ploration of the Fortieth Parallel and in Vol. VI
(1878) of the Report of the United States Geo-
graphical Surveys West of the One Hundredth
Meridian in Charge of Lt. Geo. M. Wheeler.
These papers set a high standard of excellence
and contained a vast amount of pioneer work:
Soon after beginning his studies he started a cor-
respondence with Charles Leo Lesquereux [q.v,]
which later led to their collaboration.
To restore his broken health he made a jour-

James

ney to Europe in 1878, during which he spent
many profitable hours with the great European
student of mosses, W. Ph. Schimper, making
comparisons of American and old-world species.
He was soon recognized as the foremost special-
ist on American mosses, and undertook, with
Lesquereux, the preparation of a Manual of
North American Mosses. At his death he left
his share of this labor in such a condition that
it could be finished by other workers, and it was
published in 1884, a classic in the bryology of
the new' world.

James was a modest, retiring individual, gen-
erous and self-denying, spending little on him-
self except for instruments and books with which
to carry on his work. He was a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and
of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science; secretary of the Pennsylvania
Horticultural Society for twenty-five years;
treasurer for twenty-seven years and one of the
founders of the American Pomological Society ;
and an active member of the American Philo-
sophical Society, the American Pharmaceutical
Society, and the Boston Society of Natural His-
tory.

[See Mary Isabella James Gozzaldi, "Thomas Potts
James," Bryologist, Sept. 1903; J. T. Rothrock, in
Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., vol. XX (1883) ; Asa Gray, in
Am. Jour. Sci.f Apr. 1882, and in Proc. Am. Acad.,
n.s. IX (1882); Isabella B. James, Memorial of Thomas
Potts, Jr. (1874); Boston Transcript, Feb. 27, 1882.
James's collections are housed in the Farlow Herba-
rium of Cryptogamic Botany at Harvard University,
and his letters, including his extensive correspondence
with Lesquereux, are in the library of that herbarium.]

H.M.R.

JAMES, WILLIAM (Jan. 11, i842-Aug. 26,
1910), philosopher and psychologist, was the son
of Henry James, 1811-1882 [q.v.], and Mary
(Walsh) James. His humor, elasticity, and
genial temper were evidently not unrelated to the
fact that both of his grandfathers were of Irish
blood. He resembled his father in his exuber-
ance, his candor, his tenderness, and in his ner-
vous sensitiveness and instability. He was pro-
foundly influenced by his father's indifference
to worldly success, his courageous honesty, and
above all by his lifelong preoccupation with the
deeper problems of life and religion. Member-
ship in this family circle was an important factor
in the schooling of its junior members, who con-
sisted, in addition to William, of his younger
brothers Henry, 1843-1916 [g.<], Wilkinson,
and Robertson, and his sister Alice. They were
all talented, and the spirit of freedom and tol-
erance which pervaded the household encour-
aged them to act and react vigorously upon one
another. William's formal schooling was irreg-
ular and intermittent owing in part to the acci-

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