Charles.G.B.Daubeny

Professor.Charles Giles Bridle Daubeny FRS, FGS, FLS.(1795-13th December 1867), was the son of the Rev.James Daubeny of Stratton, near Cirencester.

He was educated at Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford, gaining his B.A. in 1814. He studied medicine at Edinburgh (1815-18). At Oxford he became Professor of Chemistry (1822-55), but also needed to practise for a time as a physician at Oxford. He became Professor of Botany in 1834, and Professor of Rural Economy in 1840. His chemical knowledge of volcanic soils was found to be useful by the farming community. This practical interest gave Daubeny much needed support for his lectures that helped to promote the founding of the Cirencester Royal Agricultural College.

Daubeny worked on volcanics in the Auvergne range of mountains in central France, he published this work in 1826 as "A Description of Active and Extinct Volcanoes", and produced a much larger book in 1848. His wide interests included medicine, geology, chemistry, agriculture and botany. Daubeny's house was sited at the Botanical Gardens, Oxford where he "was much occupied with experimental science", though not considered one of the great researchers, Daubeny was an active researcher and he was well regarded at Oxford as a temperate reformer and a promoter of physical science.

His links with Gloucestershire came from his frequent visits to stay with his brother, Edward Andrew Daubeny, vicar of Ampney Crucis from 1829. Edward had an interesting life as a young man he was a midshipman on H.M.S. Bellona and was wounded in the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. Edward was also rector of the parish church of Ampney St. Peter from 1820 to 1875. Edward's son Thomas Daubeny was elected a member of the Cotteswold Club on the 6th October 1846.

On the 3rd August 1847 Daubeny arranged to met the Club at Lydiard Millicent in Wiltshire, where he was examining the spoil from a deep well that was being sunk, where we are told he was disappointed at not being able to "meet with the remains of an Ichthyosaur to show the club". On December 7th 1847 he invited the club to Oxford. Here they made a tour of the museums, the members were "especially engaged" by the valuable collection of fossils. He gave a talk in the lecture room attached to his house on volcanoes and their importance to agriculture.

There are no papers by Daubeny in the "Proceedings" of the Club but he gave a number of talks. One was "Recent Fossil Bone Earth in the Crag of Suffolk and in the Greensand of Farnham" illustrated by specimens. This was given after an early breakfast at Sir Thomas Tancred's house at Stratton on the 2nd May 1848. He explained the importance of this abundant source of fertilising ingredients. Twenty eight members attended the lecture including James Buckman, Dr Wright, John Jones, Barwick Baker, John Lycett and Prideaux John Selby. Later that day Buckman showed his valuable collection of fossils at the Agricultural College. They finished the day with a "plain and substantial repast" at the White Swan Cirencester.

Daubeny provided the Club with a useful link with the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He was one of the earliest members in 1831 and was the President at the Cheltenham meeting of 1856. After Charles Darwin published his "Origin of Species" in 1859 Daubeny gave Darwin strong support by publishing a paper "On the Sexuality of Plants" read before the British Association in 1860. Daubeny died on the 13th December 1867 aged 72, he never married

. He published papers in the Q.J.G.S. in 1868, and the Proceedings of the Linnean Society in 1867-8. Some of his collections are thought to be in Oxford University Museum and his Stonesfield Slate fossils from Oxfordshire are in the Yorkshire Museum.

Updated and corrected 1999 - 2002