The President's Address. By A. B. Michael. 1 
his health would not allow him to perform the duties of the office. It 
was as secretary that he laboured so earnestly to promote the welfare 
of this Society, and it was during his secretaryship that he contributed 
the twenty-one papers, including some of his most important, which 
adorn our Transactions. 
Probably no sounder or more earnest student of nature ever lived 
than John Thomas Quekett, who was born on the 11th of August, 
1815 ; he was the youngest son of the head-master of the Langport 
Grammar School ; his earliest tastes were for entomology, and ac- 
companied by his brothers Edwin the botanist and Edward the orni- 
thologist, and by his sister, who in later years drew so many of his 
diagrams, he used to wander about the Langport woods in search of 
those treasures with which the young people filled their father’s 
house. So early did he turn his attention to the Microscope, that at 
the age of sixteen he delivered a course of lectures at Langport on 
microscopical science, illustrated by diagrams and by a Microscope 
manufactured by himself out of a roasting-jack, a parasol, and a piece 
of brass which he bought at a marine-store dealer’s and hammered 
out. He was described as “ strangely sedate, careless of his appearance, 
heedless of conventionalities, and unattracted by the ordinary amuse- 
ments of children.” Being intended for medicine he was sent to 
London, apprenticed to his brother Edwin, and entered at the London 
Hospital ; he became a M.R.C.S. in 1840, and in the same year com- 
peted for and obtained the studentship in human and comparative 
anatomy, then recently established. When the studentship expired 
in 1843 he became Assistant Conservator of the Hunterian Museum at 
the College of Surgeons ; in 1844 he was appointed by the Council 
“ to deliver annually a course of demonstrations with a view to the 
exhibition and connected description of the collection, and the explana- 
tion of the method and resources of microscopical study.” On the 
retirement of Owen in 1856 Quekett was appointed his successor and 
also Professor of Histology ; these offices he held up to his death. He 
was elected a F.R.S. in 1860, shortly before his death ; he made over 
sixteen thousand preparations for the histological collection of the 
College of Surgeons, which he practically created. In 1848 he pub- 
lished his celebrated ‘ Practical Treatise on the Use of the Microscope/ 
a German translation of which was published in 1850 ; his other 
important works are too numerous for me to mention here ; yet he 
died at the early age of forty-six, at Pangbourne, on the 20 th of August, 
1861, and for some time previously had been in very bad health ; and 
few men spent so much of their time in helping others. 
It had been anticipated that probably the construction of the 
Microscope would be the first subject which would attract attention, 
but this turned out not to be so ; such was the activity of biologists 
that, although the number of papers presented to the older Societies 
was not diminished, yet those that flowed in to the new Society from 
men of first-class standing were at first almost wholly biological ; the 
