92 Transactions of the 



II.— OBITUAEY NOTICES. 



Joseph Bancroft Keade was bom on the 5th April, 1801, at 

 Leeds, m Yorkshii'e, and received his elementary education at the 

 grammar school of that town. He subsequently matriculated at 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, whence he was elected to a scholarship 

 at Caius College, graduating B.A. as Senior Optime in 1825, and 

 M.A. in 1828. His first acquaintance with the microscope appears 

 to have begun when he was fifteen years of age, his father at this 

 time having presented him with one of DoUand's. The highest 

 power of this microscope he preserved, and he wished it to be given 

 to the Society after his decease, together with a microscope similar 

 in make to the one referred to. It is evident that this presentation 

 was an indication of the early bent of his mind. That he always 

 showed great attachment to science, particularly to optics, is evi- 

 denced by the favourite studies of his hfe being astronomy and 

 microscopy : chemistry and photography also came in for a share of 

 his attention. The earhest published paper I can find, connected 

 with microscopy, is one communicated to the ' Phil. Mag.,' in July, 

 1837, " On the Existence of Structure in the Ashes of Plants and 

 then- Analogy to the Osseous System of Animals." 



The object of this paper was to prove, by microscopical exami- 

 nation of the ashes of plants, that combustion does not, as we have 

 hitherto supposed, destroy brute matter merely, but that it leaves 

 behind a purely vegetable product — a product far from being dis- 

 similar in its nature to the bones of animals, and having its par- 

 ticles undoubtedly arranged by the " agency of a hving principle." 



To this paper some fiirther observations were made in the No- 

 vember number of the same year, the great object of which was to 

 show that there was no accidental introduction with respect to the 

 elements of vegetable structure, as previously expressed by Bracon- 

 not ; and with the view of showing that the organization of fossil 

 plants is retained even after being submitted to the heat of a com- 

 mon fii'e, and that the white ashes of coal contained the usual forms 

 of vegetable matter, viz. cellular structure, smooth and spiral fibre 

 and annular ducts, illustrations of which accomj)anied the previous 

 paper, — in this paper he further adverted to the structure observable 

 in other specimens of coal, from which he inferred that the frame- 

 work and basis of vegetable structure in the plants of coal is not 

 only entirely independent of carbon, but that it has also resisted 

 the bituminous decomposition which has converted all the carbo- 

 naceous material into a highly inflammable substance. 



In the same journal (November, 1837) there is another paper, 

 originally read at the British Association in 1837, " On the Chemical 

 Composition of Vegetable Membrane and Fibre," in which he inci- 

 dentaDy states that spiral vessels exist in the roots of dicotyledonous 



