# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Bennett, Alfred William

​BENNETT, ALFRED WILLIAM (1833–1902), botanist, born at Clapham, Surrey, on 24 June 1833, was second son of William Bennett (d. 1873), a tea-dealer. Like his parents, he was a member of the Society of Friends. The father, a good field botanist, was intimate with the naturalists Edward Newman [q. v.] and Edward and Henry Doubleday [q. v.] ; he published 'A Narrative of a Journey in Ireland in 1847' and 'Joint-stock Companies' in 1861, and in 1851 retired to Brockham Lodge, Betchworth, Surrey, where it is said that he bred emus to the third generation. His mother, Elizabeth (d. 1891), wrote some religious books (Joseph Smith, Friends' Books, supplement, p. 56). Bennett's elder brother, Edward Trusted (1831-1908), at one time edited the 'Crusade,' a temperance magazine Save for some months in 1841-2 at the Pestalozzian School at Appenzell, Bennett was educated at home. Long walking tours in Wales, the west of England, and the lake district, undertaken by Bennett with his father and brother, were reported by them in the 'Phytologist' (iv. (1851), 312, 439 and (1852), 757-8). On the last occasion they called upon Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, and he accompanied them up Fairfield to show them Silene acaulis.
Bennett attended classes at University College, London, and graduated B.A. from the University of London in 1853, with honours in chemistry and botany, proceeding M.A. in 1855 and B.Sc. in 1868. After leaving college he acted for a short time as tutor in the family of Gurney Barclay, the banker. In 1858 he started business as a bookseller and publisher at ​5 Bishopsgate Street Within, London. Besides works by his father and mother he issued the early poems of the Hon. John Leicester Warren, afterwards third Baron de Tabley [q. v.], a fellow botanist. In 1868 Bennett gave up business, was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society, and became lecturer on botany at Bedford College and at St. Thomas's Hospital. From 1870 to 1874 he was biological assistant to Dr. (now Sir) Norman Lockyer, while editing the newly established paper 'Nature.' After writing on pollination and the Order Polygalaceæ for Sir Joseph Hooker's 'Flora of British India' (vol. i. 1872), and for Martius's 'Flora Brasiliensis' (1874), Bennett, who knew German well, performed what was, perhaps, his greatest service to British botanical students, by translating and editing, with the assistance of Mr. (now Sir William) Thiselton-Dyer, the third edition of Julius Sachs's 'Lehrbuch der Botanik' (1875). He also translated and edited Professor Otto Thomé's 'Lehrbuch,' as 'Text-book of Structural and Physiological Botany,' in 1877.
On Alpine plants Bennett published three works: 'Alpine Plants,' translated from the 'Alpenpflanzen' of J. Seboth, in four volumes, with 100 plates in each (1879–84); 'The Tourist's Guide to the Flora of the Austrian Alps,' from the German of K. W. von Dalla Torre (1882), with better illustrations; and 'The Flora of the Alps . . . descriptive of all the species of flowering plants indigenous to Switzerland and of the Alpine species of the adjacent mountain districts . . . including the Pyrenees' (2 vols. 1896–7), with 120 coloured plates from David Wooster's 'Alpine Plants.' In 1879 Bennett became a fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, and thenceforth mainly confined his researches to cryptogamic plants, especially the freshwater algæ. He re-wrote the section on cryptogams for Henfrey's 'Elementary Botany' (4th edit., by Maxwell Masters, 1884); and in the 'Handbook of Cryptogamic Botany,' an original work, which he undertook with George Robert Milne Murray [q. v. Suppl. II] in 1889, he wrote of all groups containing chlorophyll. From 1897 he edited the 'Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society.' He died suddenly from heart disease, on his way home from the Savile Club, on 23 Jan. 1902, and was buried in the Friends' burial-ground at Isleworth. He married in 1858 Katherine, daughter of William Richardson of Sunderland, who predeceased him, leaving no children.
Described by Professor Vines, in presidential address to the Linnean Society for 1902, as 'a laborious student and a conscientious teacher of botany,' Bennett was a contributor to the 'Journal of Botany,' 'The Popular Science Review,' the 'Reports' of the British Association, and other scientific periodicals. Among his minor publications were: 1. 'Mycological Illustrations,' with W. Wilson Saunders and Worthington G. Smith, 1871. 2. 'Introduction to the Study of Flowerless Plants,' 1891. 3. 'Pre-Foxite Quakerism,' reprinted, with additions, from the 'Friends' Quarterly Examiner,' 1894.
[Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society, 1902, 155–7 (with photographic portrait); Journal of Botany, 1902, 113; Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 1901–2, 26; Nature, lxv. 34; Gardeners' Chronicle, 1902, i. 85.]
G. S. B.