Xll 



the Bishop, true to his promise, presented him to the Vicarage of 

 Sibbertoft, in Northamptonshire, then worth about £400, but which 

 rapidly dwindled as agricultural distress supervened. 



Of private property he had none, and he himself educated his 

 fifteen children, thirteen of whom lived to be over twenty-one years 

 of age. His works, it need hardly be said, yielded the merest 

 trifle, but he was fortunate in holding examinerships in the 

 University of London, Cambridge, and the Society of Apothecaries ; 

 he was also for several years botanical referee to the Royal Horti- 

 cultural Society. In 1863 he received one of the Royal Medals of 

 the Royal Society for his researches on the reproductive organs in 

 Thallogens, &c. ; and in 1879 a Civil Service Pension of £100 per 

 annum was awarded him for his investigations on the diseases of 

 agricultural crops, &c. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean 

 Society in 1836, and of this Society in 1879. Shortly before his 

 death, which took place at Sibbertoft, on July 30th, 1889, he was 

 made an Honorary Fellow of his Cambridge College (Christ's). He 

 married in 1833 Miss Cecilia Emma Campbell, by whom he had, as 

 stated above, fifteen children, ten of whom survive him. 



J. D. H, 



Sir Robert John Kane, LL.D., F.R.S., who died in Dublin on 

 the 16th of February, 1890, in his eighty-first year, belonged to the 

 distinguished group of chemists whose chief scientific work was 

 accomplished during the first half of the present century. Sir R. 

 Kane's contributions to chemical science almost ceased after 1850, 

 when his official relations with the Irish Government drew off his 

 attention to the economic and educational problems of the time. His 

 scientific knowledge, scholarly attainments, and experience were then 

 freely utilised by the State in the efforts made to establish the system 

 of education which was, until very recently, represented by the 

 Queen's University and its Colleges at Cork, Belfast, and Galway. 



Born in 1809 at Dublin, where his father had established a chemi- 

 cal factory, young Kane was educated in his native city, and ulti- 

 mately (in 1835) graduated in Arts at the University, whose LL.D. 

 degree was subsequently conferred upon him (Stip. cundonatis). The 

 family connexion with industrial chemistry seems to have early 

 attracted him to scientific pursuits, and the first results of his 

 chemical work appeared in 1829, in the form of two short papers on 

 Native Compounds of Manganese, including the description of an 

 arsenide of manganese, since known as " Kaneite." But before the 

 publication of these papers Kane had commenced the study of medi- 

 cine, apparently with a view to adopt it as a profession, for he became 

 clinical clerk to Graves and Stokes at the then celebrated Meath 

 Hospital, in Dublin, and went to Paris in 1830 to continue his medi- 



