298 Linnean Society. [May 24, 



. May 24. 



The Lord Bishop of Norwich, President, in the Chair. 



This day, the Anniversary of the birth of Linnaeus, and that ap- 

 pointied by the Charter for the election of Council and Officers, the 

 President opened the business of the Meeting and stated the num- 

 ber of Members whom the Society had lost during the past year, of 

 some of whom the Secretary read the following notices : — 



James Hussey Abraham, Esq., for nearly half a century the con- 

 ductor of the most flourishing seminary in the town of Sheffield, was 

 well-skilled in various branches of Natural Philosophy, especially 

 Electricity and Magnetism, and possessed a large and valuable col- 

 lection of apparatus with which he illustrated his lectures on these 

 and allied branches of science. In the course of his magnetic expe- 

 riments, the idea suggested itself to him that the minute particles of 

 steel evolved in the dry grinding of forks, needles, &c., the inhala- 

 tion of which is so deleterious to the workmen engaged in those 

 trades, might be intercepted by means of a wire-gauze mask, or 

 caught by a chaplet of magnets worn about the mouth of the ope- 

 rator. For the ingenious contrivance by which he proposed to effect 

 this object, he received in 1821 the large gold medal of the Society 

 of Arts. Other ingenious modifications of the practical application 

 pf the magnet were also devised by Mr. Abraham ; and he delivered 

 a lecture on this, his favourite topic, at an evening meeting of the 

 British Association, at their first meeting in the city of York in 1831. 

 In conjunction with his friend James Montgomery the poet, who 

 then edited one of the local newspapers, he was mainly instrumental 

 in originating the Literary and Philosophical Society of Sheffield, of 

 w^hich in 1834 he was elected President. He was also celebrated in 

 his neighbourhood for his skill in horticulture, and seldom failed to 

 carry olF one or more prizes at the exhibitions of the Sheffield Hor- 

 ticultural Society, founded in 1830 by himself and some friends; the 

 prize medals of which Society bear on their obverse an exquisitely 

 engraved head of Linnseus. Mr. Abraham died on the 5th of Fe- 

 bruary in the present year, in the 69th year of his age. He became 

 a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1825. 

 Henry Singer Chinnock, Esq. 



Barron Field, Esq., was born on the 23rd of October 178G. He 

 was the second son of Mr. Henry Field, who was in extensive me- 

 dical practice in London, and for many years apothecary to Christ's 



