li:n"itean society of lokdok. xxxui 



and Euglisli prose and verse, to the pages of the 'Monthly Ledger ' 

 (a short-lived periodical), the ' Grentleman's Magazine,' and other 

 literary publications. Joseph, the subject of this notice, as well 

 as his elder brother Samuel, who died in 1853, aged 80, appears 

 to have inherited the tastes and talents of his father. In the 

 days of his childhood, to use his own words, " there was a great 

 deficiency of good schools among tlie Society of Friends, and one 

 year passed in attendance on a day-school in London, kept by a 

 Mr. Lord, was the only efficient schooling I ever had." He must, 

 however, in later years have made up for the defects of his early 

 education by the most assiduous self-instruction, as he subsequently 

 became proficient in Latin, Grreek, and Hebrew, as well as the 

 modern languages, French, German, Italian, and Eomaic, in which 

 he was able to converse familiarly. Having been obliged to leave 

 school by the state of his healtli, for which sea-bathiug had been 

 recommended, he was sent, Avhen about thirteen or fourteen, to 

 Folkestone, where he became acquainted with the late Lewis 

 Weston Dillwyn, with whom (the two lads being about of an age) 

 much of his time was spent. At the age of sixteen, Mr. "Woods 

 was apprenticed to Mr. J. Beck, at Dover, and, during his stay 

 there, paid some attention to botany ; but it was not till some 

 years later that, on revisiting Dover, he was fairly inoculated 

 with a taste for that science by his friend Dillwyn, who had suc- 

 ceeded him in that place, and by whom he was introduced to the 

 three brothers, Edward, Thomas Furley, and B. M. Forster, and 

 subsequently to the breakfast-table of Sir Joseph Banks, where 

 his passion for the pursuit of natural history could hardly fail 

 of being further developed. 



His health and strength being re-established, and finding his 

 commercial avocations at Dover uncongenial, Mr. Woods, at the 

 close of his apprenticeship, yielded to a natural inclination for 

 architectural design, and placed himself, about the year 1798, 

 with Mr. Alexander, the architect of the West India Docks, and 

 who was then largely engaged in carrying out some important 

 public works in the metropolis and elsewhere. Upon quitting 

 Mr. Alexander, he seems to have commenced business on his own 

 account, devoting himself, with liis usual energy and perseverance, 

 to the practice of his profession, notwithstanding that the state of 

 his health rarely left him long free from suffering. In the year 

 1808, he united with a few professional friends to found, with a 

 view to mutual improvement by discussion and the reading of 

 papers, the London jirchitectural Society, of which he was the 



LINK. PROC— -VOL. VIII. C 



