Benjamin Meggot Forster (16 January 1764 – 8 March 1829) was an English botanist and mycologist who published An Introduction to the Knowledge of Fungusses in 1820.
Life
Forster was the second son of Edward Forster the elder and his wife Susanna, and was born in Walbrook, London, on 16 January 1764. He was educated with his brothers Edward Forster the younger and Thomas Furly Forster and sister, Susanna Dorothy Forster at Walthamstow, and became a member of the firm of Edward Forster & Sons, Russia merchants, but took little interest in business.
Forster never married, living with his father and mother till their death, when he took a cottage called Scotts, at Hale End, Walthamstow. There he died 8 March 1829.
Works
Forster was a student of science, especially botany and electricity. He executed many drawings of fungi, communicated various species to James Sowerby, and in 1820 published, with initials only, An Introduction to the Knowledge of Fungusses, pp. 20, with two plates. He contributed articles to the Gentleman's Magazine under various signatures, and is credited with eight scientific contributions to the Philosophical Magazine in the Royal Society's Catalogue. They deal with fungi, the electric column, and atmospheric phenomena. He invented the sliding portfolio, the atmospherical electroscope, and an orrery of perpetual motion (a failure).
