VENN: Adm. sizar at ST JOHN'S, June 22, 1809. Of Cumberland. [S. of –, a weaver, of Cockermouth. B. July 4, 1789.] Enabled ‘by the patronage of some gentlemen of fortune’ to enter St John's College. ' Matric. Michs. 1809; Scholar, 1812; B.A. 1813; M.A. 1816. Fellow. F.S.A., 1823. Ord. deacon (Ely) Aug. 24, 1815; priest, Mar. 14, 1819. Assistant Master at Plumbland School, Cumberland. Held a mathematical lectureship at Corpus Christi College for two years. Director of the Astronomical Observatory planned for the Cape of Good Hope by the Commissioners of Longitude, 1820. The results of his first observations were presented to the Royal Society, Feb. 26, 1824, as A Catalogue of Nearly All The Principal Fixed Stars Between The Zenith of Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, and The South Pole, reduced to the 1st of Jan., 1824. The permanent instruments were fixed in their places in 1829, but he was only able to carry on his work through the devotion of his wife (dau. of Mr Hervey, his former patron, whom he had married in 1821) who qualified herself to act as his assistant. His health failed owing to sunstroke soon after his arrival, and he had to be carried daily in a blanket from his sickroom to the Observatory. Removed in Mar. 1831, to Simon's Bay, where he died July 25. Buried under a slab of black Robben-island stone opposite the Observatory. His 4000 observations were reduced under the supervision of Sir George Airy and published at the expense of the Admiralty as Results of the [p.456] Observations made by the Rev. Fearon Fallows at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, in the years 1829-31. Author, An Account of Some Parhelia seen at the Cape of Good Hope (Quarterly Journal of Science, XVI. 365, 1823), and An Easy Method of comparing the Time indicated by any number of Chronometers with the given Time at a certain Station (Ibid. XVII. 315, 1824). (D.N.B.)