26 PEOCEEDIXGS OF THE 



He was J.P. for Middlesex, and joined our Society on Xo- 

 vember 16, 1871, though of late years he seldom was present at 

 our meetings, A portrait of Mr. Beale was published in ' The 

 Gardeners' Chronicle' of January 18, 1902, p. 49. 



Alfred AVilliam Bennett was born at Clapham, June 24, 1833. 

 His father "William Bennett, a man of much energy and originality, 

 had retired at an early age from business as a wholesale tea- 

 dealer, and was a friend of Edward Newman and of the Doubledays : 

 young Bennett consequently imbibed a love of natural history from 

 his earliest years. 



During 1841-42 the whole family spent several months at a 

 Pestalozzian school in Appenzell, but with this exception all of 

 Bennett's education was entirely at home. In 1851 his home was 

 removed to Brockham, midway bcjtvveen Eeigate and Dorking ; 

 here his father's characteristic turn showed itself by his breeding 

 emus to the third generation. At this time, and two or three 

 years later, the subject of our notice, with his father and an elder 

 brother, made some long walking tours in Wales and the western 

 counties, and some of the results will be found recorded in the 

 ' Phytologist,' vol. iv. (1851) pp. 312, 439, and the same volume 

 (1852) pp. 757-758. On an excursion to the lakes, they called 

 on Wordsworth, who took them up Fairfield to show them Silene 

 acaulis in flower. 



Alfred Bennett attended classes at University College, and took 

 his degi-ees of B.Sc. (1868) and M.A. (1855) at London University. 



In 1858 he married Katiierine, the daughter of William 

 Eichardson, of Sunderland, and in the same year entered into 

 business as a publisher and bookseller, opposite Bishopsgate 

 Church. He made a speciality of photographic illustrations, such 

 as those in H. B. George's ' With Ice-axe and Camera in the 

 Bernese Oberland,' a volume on Yorkshire abbeys, and the like. 

 He also published the poems of the 4th Lord De Tabley, then 

 known as the Hon. Leicester Warren. In 1868 he gave up 

 business, and on Feb. 6 of the same year he was elected Eellow of 

 this Society : about this time he opened his house for ladies who 

 came to London to study at Bedford College and elsewhere. 



Prom 1871-73 he wrote several papers on problems of ferti- 

 lization, amongst them one in our own Journal on Parnassia 

 (vol. ix. p. 315) ; these brought him under the notice of Charles 

 Darwin, who encouraged him with his in\ ariable kindness. He 

 contributed a synopsis of the Indian species of Polygalacece to 

 Sir J. D. Hooker's ' Plora of British India,' vol. i. pp. 20U-211, 

 issued in 1872, and of the larger series in the great ' Flora 

 Brasiliensis •' in 1874, his contribution being fasc. 63, of 83 folio 

 columns and 30 plates ; subsequent supplementary papers appeared 

 in the ' Journal of Botany ' from time to time. 



In 1873 his father died. Two years later he went on a walking 

 tour in Switzerland with Mr. J. G. Baker, F.E.S., and they 

 recognized 200 species of flowering plants they neither had 

 previously seen in a living state. 



