The English doctor John Davy (1790–1868) was the younger brother of the chemist Sir Humphry Davy, of whom he wrote a memoir, also reissued in this series. After graduating from Edinburgh University, he entered the Army as a surgeon and was posted overseas. From 1824 to 1835 he was stationed in the Mediterranean, and later at Constantinople. Davy took detailed notes of the places he visited and the people he met, and turned some of these writings into books; his scientific observations led to him being made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1834. Davy's account of his time in the Mediterranean was published in two volumes in 1842. Volume 1 begins with an overview of the respective histories of the Ionian Islands and Malta, and then discusses at length the geological and climatic aspects of the islands, examining their mineralogy, seasons, water temperature, and soil composition.