BENNETT (Alfred William, F.L.S., 1833-1902, Lecturer in Botany at Bedford College and St. Thomas' Hospital)

Autograph Letter Signed to  Robert Morton MIDDLETON , jr., F.L.S., F.Z.S., (1846-1909, English shipbroker and botanist), telling him that they had "spent the greater part of the month in Yorkshire, including 10 days at Rievaulx, which of course you know well ... I fear the autographs I enclose will be but a very small return for those you were kind enough to give me ..." [list of 10, including British and American naturalists], "I have also duplicate autographs of the following ... [list of 34, mostly scientists, some with notes of their specialities]. I have also duplicate portraits c[arte] de v[isite] size (some of them mounted, but could easily be soaked off) [list of 13, scientists, writers and public figures]. If any of the above are of the least value to you, do not scruple to ask for them, as they are simply filling up my box of duplicates. You showed me a list ... among them were I think Ld. Russell, & J. Faed (artist) ... & could offer in exchange Lubbock, Carpenter, Hooker, Tyndall, Huxley (I think, but sig. only) & a good many others", with a good contemporary woodblock view of the Houses of Parliament and St. Thomas' Hospital, from an illustrated paper, 6 sides 8vo., 6 Park Village East, Regent's Park, N.W., 12th September

Bennett translated and edited Julius Sachs' 'Lehrbuch der Botanik', 1875, and collaborated in 'Handbook of cryptogamic Botany', 1889.
Middleton was employed at one time by the Hartlepools Shipowners' Society. About 1886 he and his wife settled in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, at the foot of the Cumberland Mountains. He corresponded with many leading naturalists, collected autographs, and presented a herbarium of some 3000 American and other specimens to McGill University in December 1890, returning permanently to England in 1892. With his wife and sister he spent 1904-1907 as a missionary in Chile. Again returning, he took a house in Kew and was a Temporary Assistant at the Natural History Museum till 1909.

Item Date:  1883

Stock No:  13897      £50

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