DAVID, ARMAND. - Missionary and naturalist, born at Espellette (Basses-Pyrénées) on 7 Sept. 1826, died in Paris on 10 Nov. 1900. Having become a Vincentian missionary (1848), he was assigned to teaching at the college in Savona, where he began an advanced course in natural sciences. In 1862 he departed for China, remaining there until 1874, combining his apostolic ministry with his passion as a naturalist. In twelve years he undertook three expeditions, to Mongolia (1866), to Tibet (1868–1870), and to central-western China (1872).
The results are described in his travel journals and in reports published by the Paris Museum of Natural History. His discoveries were important and numerous, several of which bear his name, especially in the realm of birds, which he described in *Oiseaux de la Chine* (Paris 1876), and in those of invertebrates and plants, which he described in the work, in two folio volumes, entitled *Plantae Davidianae* (ibid. 1884). D. organized three collections of natural history, at Peking, at Savona, and at the motherhouse of the missionaries in Paris, and enriched the Paris Museum of Natural History.