"We have to record the death of one of our excellent practical chemists
and metallurgists, Frederick W. Davis, of Boston, who died at his
father's house, of typhoid fever, on the 12th of December last, at the
age of thirty-one years. Mr. Davis received a good education at the
school of Mr. Greene, of Jamaica Plains, in Roxbury, and was then
placed under the scientific instruction of Dr. Charles T. Jackson, in
whose laboratory he pursued his studies with great diligence and
success, for three years.
"In 1844 he accompanied Dr. Jackson in his early explorations of the
copper regions of Lake Superior, and distinguished himself as an active
and faithful explorer of the mineral district on Keweenaw Point. In 1847
he was appointed by the Revere Copper Company as Superintendent of their
copper-smelting furnaces at Point Shirley, which he conducted with
signal ability from that time until he was seized with the fever of
which he died. While attending to the active and complicated business of
the copper-works, making all the assays of ores, fluxes, furnace slags,
and of the crude copper produced, he found time to make many interesting
and important metallurgical researches, and many scientific observations
and experiments on the formation of artificial minerals, both in the
furnace and in the roasting heaps of copper ores. He produced a new
mineral, composed of the sulphurets of zinc and copper, which was found
in brilliant black crystals in the roasted ores. He pointed out several
new forms of crystals in the slags from his blast furnaces, and he also
beautifully illustrated the theory of the formation of native copper
from the vaporized chloride of copper, while working the Atacamite of
Peru.
"The most important of his labors were of an eminently practical nature,
such as discovering the best and most economical methods of mixing the
various copper ores of commerce, so as to make one ore flux another, and
thus to obtain the largest yield of metal at the least expense.
"Science and the arts have met with a great loss in the death of this
young metallurgist, whose labors were calculated to render efficient
services to mankind and to raise the business of the working furnace to
the rank of a truly chemical art and science.
"His numerous friends and acquaintances well knew his worth as a man and
a friend; always generous, considerate, and kind, and never wanting in
public spirit when occasion called him out, he was both respected and
beloved by all who knew him."