John Trewiville, was born at London on the 10th September 1713, and was descended from an ancient and noble family. He studied and taught rhetoric at the English college at Douay, conducted a Roman Catholic school near Winchester, and in 1744 was appointed professor of philosophy in the English college at Lisbon. Ill health soon compelled him to leave Portugal, and he passed several years at London and Paris, which were principally employed in microscopical observations, and in other branches of experimental philosophy. The results were published in the *Philosophical Transactions* of the Royal Society of London, of which he was a member, in 1749, and at Paris in 1750, in 1 vol. 12mo. An account of them was also given by his friend Buffon in the first volumes of his *Natural History*. From 1751 to 1767 he was chiefly employed as a travelling tutor, and in 1768 he retired to the English seminary at Paris. He afterwards received the appointment of chief director of the Imperial Academy, then instituted in the Austrian Netherlands, where he remained till his death, on 30th December 1781.

The papers of Needham inserted in the *Philosophical Transactions* are contained in vols. xlii., xliv., xlv., and li. He also wrote a curious pamphlet in connection with the controversy then in agitation respecting the origin of the Chinese, entitled *De Inscriptione quadam Ægyptica Taurini inventa, et characteribus, Ægyptis olim et Sinis communibus exarata*, 1761, in 8vo.