Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/655

 improvement and quick to grapple with complicated details. Although he did not retire from active duties of his firm till 1885, he always pursued many and diverse interests. When a boy of nine he had shown leanings towards natural science, and had hammered out for himself a collection of fossils from the Wenlock limestone quarries at Dudley. His later scientific studies were partly influenced by the practical requirements of his business. Water-supply being of primary importance to the paper-manufacturer, and his firm being engaged in an important law-suit, Dickinson v. The Grand Junction Canal Co., he made a special study of the subject, on which he became a recognised authority. He gave evidence before the royal commission on metropolitan water-supply, 1892. In his own district he explored the superficial deposits, as well as the deeper water-bearing strata, and investigated such matters as the relations between rainfall and evaporation, and the percolation of rain through soil. He kept in his own care the rain-gauges and percolation-gauges erected by his uncle at Nash Mills. In 1859 Evans accompanied Sir Joseph Prestwich [q. v. Suppl. I], the geologist, to France, as his assistant in an examination of flint-implements found in the old river-gravels of the valley of the Somme. Prestwich and Evans confirmed the opinion of the discoverer, Boucher de Perthes (circ. 1841–7), that these chipped flints were human handiwork and that they helped to prove the antiquity of man in western Europe. Evans wrote in 1860 in the 'Archæologia' on 'Flint Implements in the Drift, being an account of their discovery on the Continent and in England' (xxxviii. 280; cf. xxxix. 57). He now began to devote more continuous attention to the traces of early man in river-gravels and cavern-deposits, and formed a remarkable collection of stone and bronze implements, partly by the purchase of representative examples, partly by his own keenness in the discovery of specimens, even on ground already explored by other collectors. From time to time he published notices, in the 'Proceedings' of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society, of the discovery and distribution of new specimens. He was also interested in fossil remains of extinct animals and published an important paper, ('Nat. Hist. Rev.' 1865; cf. 'Geol. Mag.' 1884, pp. 418–24) on the 'Cranium and Jaw of an Archeopteryx.' Evans also formed various collections of mediæval and other antiquities, Anglo-Saxon, Lombardic jewellery, posy-rings, bronze weapons, and ornaments. In two books on primitive implements Evans gathered together all the evidence as to provenance, types, and distribution, and they were recognised as standard treatises. The first, 'The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain,' was published in 1872 (French trans. 1878), a second and revised edition being issued in 1897. The other work, 'The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain and Ireland,' was published in 1881 (French trans. 1882).

Evans had a special predilection for numismatics, and formed splendid collections of ancient British money, of gold coins of the Roman emperors, including some unique specimens, and of Anglo-Saxon and English coins, among which the gold series was especially noticeable. To the pages of the 'Numismatic Chronicle' he made more than a hundred contributions, many of them accounts of hoards and of unpublished coins from his own cabinets. His important paper ('Numismatic Chronicle,' 1865) on 'The "short-cross" Question,' was the outcome of an examination of more than 6000 specimens of the early silver pennies inscribed with the name Henricvs, and he was able to show that these coins belonged to several classes and that they were attributable to the respective reigns of Henry II. Richard, John, and Henry III. But his attention was chiefly concentrated on the coinage of the ancient Britons. His paper 'On the Date of British Coins,' published in the 'Numismatic Chronicle' for 1849–50 (xii. 127), was the first attempt to place the study of this coinage on a scientific basis. He showed, with pre-Darwinian instinct, that the appearance on these coins of horses, wheels, and ornaments, of which, previously, fanciful explanations had been given, was due to a slow process of evolution, and that the designs ('types') on the coins were the remote and degraded descendants of those on the gold staters of Philip of Macedon. Evans a conception of evolution as applied to the 'types' and 'fabric' of coins has since borne fruit in other branches of numismatics (cf., Morphology of Coins, and own paper, 'Coinage of the Ancient Britons and Natural Selection,' in the Transactions of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society, vol. iii. 1885). In 1864 he published the standard work, 'The Coins of the Ancient Britons,' for which he was