Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/207

 Society was incorporated by charter in 1840) and had a great epistolary conflict with the executive after the York show of 1848, the last he attended.

Up to 1849 he had enjoyed robust health, living almost in the open air, and very simply; but a painful disease of the kidneys carried him off on 25 July 1849 at the age of seventy-four. The 'Farmers' Magazine' for January 1850 (xxi. 1 sq.), in an appreciative memoir of him, speaks of his liberality and hospitality, and describes his litigiousness as 'but a nice and discriminating view of public duty. . . .' 'Convince his judgment or appeal to his feelings, and he was gentle and yielding; but once rouse his opposition, and he was as untiring in his warfare as he was staunch and unflinching in his character. . . . He had a great delight in addressing the public, using very strong language, and always appearing in earnest. He wrote a vast number of letters to the newspapers, mainly on the politics of agriculture. . . . His writing was terse and forcible, and he had a remarkable tact in making facts bear upon his propositions, as well as a wonderful readiness in calculation and mental arithmetic'

The dispersal of Bates's herd of shorthorns on 9 May 1850 caused great excitement at the time, sixty-eight animals selling for 4,558l. 1s. (a full description is given in Farmers' Mag. 1850, xxi. 532 sq.)

Bates was never married. A portrait of him at the age of about fifty-five by Sir William Ross, R.A., was engraved for the 'Farmers' Magazine' in 1850, and a reproduction of it appears as the frontispiece of the elaborate biography of 513 pages written by Mr. Cadwallader J. Bates (his great-nephew), and published at Newcastle in 1897 under the title 'Thomas Bates and the Kirklevington Shorthorns.' From this work most of the above facts have been drawn.  BATTENBERG, HENRY. [See, 1868–1896.]  BAXENDELL, JOSEPH (1815–1887), meteorologist and astronomer, son of Thomas Baxendell and Mary his wife, nee Shepley, was born at Manchester on 19 April 1815, and received his early education at the school of Thomas Whalley, Cheetham Hill, Manchester. He left school at the age of fourteen, but not before his natural love of science had been noticed and fostered by his mother and by his schoolmaster. Of his powers of observation he made good use during six years which he spent at sea from his fourteenth to his twentieth year. In the Pacific he witnessed the wonderful shower of meteors in November 1833. When he abandoned seafaring life in 1835 he returned to Manchester, and for a while assisted his father, who was a land steward. He afterwards had a business of his own as an estate agent. From the time of his return to his native town he pursued, in a quiet unobtrusive way, his studies in astronomy and meteorology, in the former of which pursuits he had the advantage of the use of the observatory of his friend Robert Worthington at Crumpsall Hall, near Manchester. His first contribution to the Royal Astronomical Society was made in 1849. He subsequently wrote for the Royal Society's 'Proceedings,' the Liverpool Astronomical Society's 'Journal,' and a number of other publications, but the greater and more important portion of his work was contributed to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, of which he became a member in January 1858. In the following year he was placed on the council, and in 1861 became joint secretary as well as editor of the society's 'Proceedings.' The former post he retained until 1885, and the latter until his death. As colleagues in the secretaryship he had Sir H. E. Roscoe until 1873, and afterwards Professor Osborne Reynolds. He was one of the founders of the physical and mathematical section of the society in 1859. He was enrolled as a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1858, but did not become F.R.S. until 1884. In February 1859 he succeeded Henry Halford Jones as astronomer to the Manchester corporation. Some years subsequently he superintended the erection of the Fernley meteorological observatory in Hesketh Park, Southport, and was appointed meteorologist to the corporation of that town. From 1873 to 1877 he was a member of the Crumpsall local board.

His scientific contributions, of which sixty-seven are enumerated in the Royal Society's 'Catalogue of Scientific Papers,' have been ably summarised by Dr. J. Bottomley in the paper mentioned below. Of his astronomical observations, perhaps the most important are those embodied in various catalogues of variable stars. His meteorological and terrestrial-magnetical researches were of conspicuous importance, and in reference to the detection of the intimate connection between those sciences and solar physics he was one of the principal pioneers. Among other valuable suggestions for the 