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Original ^Utticlc^, 



JOHN JOSEPH BENNETT. 



Althotjgh for more than five years Mr. Bennett has separated 

 himself from the active world of London, and retired to a somewhat 

 inaccessible village in Sussex, his memory is still fresh to all who in 

 any way became acquainted with him during his long official career at 

 the British Museum and at the Linnean Society. For more than forty 

 years he^was daily to be found in the Botanical Department of the British 

 Museum, and for twenty years he served at the Linnean Society as Sec- 

 retary, attending all its meetings, and performing the greater portion of 

 its work. Thus being extensively known to men of science, and 

 especially to botanists both at home and abroad, the intimation of his 

 death will bring sorrow to many hearts, and recall the genial, warm- 

 hearted, and distinguished man whose loss we have to record. 



John Joseph Bennett was born at Tottenham, a village a few miles 

 out of London, on the great road to the north, on the 8th of January, 

 1801. His elder and only brother, Edward Turner Bennett, was 

 already five years old. The education of the two boys was begun in 

 the school at Enfield, where they had as companions the poet Keats, 

 Thirlwall the historian and Bishop of St. David's, and John Reeve, 

 who made himself famous on the stage. Eeeve and Bennett were 

 mutually helpful to each other, for in return for assistance in his sums 

 Beeve did all Bennett's fighting ! After some years of private tuition 

 in their father's house the two brothers entered upon special studies 

 for the medical profession. They attended the lectures of the eminent 

 anatomist Joshua Brookes, and became students at the Middlesex Hos- 

 pital. In due time they passed their examinations,* and together 

 established themselves in a house in Bulstrode Street, Welbeck Street. 

 Thoroughly united in their affections, they were equally united in their 

 pursuits. Their love for natural history early appeared, and received 

 both impulse and direction from their friendship and intercourse with 

 John Edward Gray, who, like therdselves, had studied medicine, but had 

 turned aside from its practice to lecture on botany, and to assist his 

 father, S. F. Gray, in the preparation of the systematic portion of his 

 " Natural Arrangement of British Plants." In this work the two 

 brothers were cordial and active assistants, and in acknowledgment of 

 their help a genus established for Serratula alpina, Linn., was dedi- 

 cated to them, with the explanatory note appended, " Messrs. Edward 

 and John Bennett, surgeons and apothecaries, of London, who devote 

 the whole of their leisure to the study of botany and natural histoi'y, 

 and have kindly given their assistance to this work." (vol. ii., p. 440). 

 De Candolle had already recognised the generic distinctness of this 

 plant, so that his name of Saussurea has supplanted Bennettia of Gray. 



* Mr. J. J. Bennett was admitted a Member of the College of Surgeons on 

 the 1st of April, 1825. 



N.s. VOL. 5. [A,PKIL, 1876.] H 



