155 



OBITUARY. 



A. W. Bennett, 

 Biographical Memoir of, by J. G. Bakeb, F.R.S. 



Alfred William Bennett was born at Clapham on the 24th of 

 June, 1833. His father, "William Bennett, a man of great energy and 

 originality, retired from business as a wholesale tea-dealer at an 

 unusually early age. He was a friend of Edward Newman and of 

 Kdward and Henry Doubleday, and was much interested in both 

 botany and entomology, so that his children were brought up in a 

 natural history atmosphere. His mother was a great friend of Mary 

 Howitt. His father was greatly interested in education, and visited 

 Switzerland to confer with Pestalozzi's favourite pupil upon the 

 subject, and also went to America to consult Emerson. During the 

 winter of 1841-1842 the whole family spent several months at a 

 Pestalozzian educational establishment in Canton Appenzell, where 

 Alfred obtained the first rudiments of that knowledge of German 

 which he afterwards turned to such good account as a translator of 

 'German botanical works. With this exception, his early education 

 was entirely conducted at home. In 1851 the family removed to 

 Brockham, a village which is in a valley at the foot of the chalk 

 ■downs midway between Keigate and Dorking. Here they had a large 

 garden, and William Bennett interested himself in rearing and 

 breeding emus, which he kept to the third generation. 



From 1851-1854, in company with his father and elder brother, 

 Edward Trusted Bennett, he made several long walking tours in 

 Wales and the West of England. The observations they made will 

 be found in various notes and papers scattered through the earlier 

 series of the Phytologist, written sometimes by one and at another 

 time by others of the trio. They principally refer to Wales, Cornwall, 

 Hampshire, and Herefordshire. In one of them will be found a list 

 of Welsh ferns, arranged according to their frequency ; in another, 

 the account of how the day after visiting the Sussex locality for 

 Leersia oryzoides, which had just been added to the British flora by 

 Mr. Borrer, Alfred walked across the bridge that spans the river 

 Mole just outside the garden, and saw abundance of the new grass 

 on the banks of the stream around him. On a trip, a few years 



