126 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



and the success of his labors was largely due to unremitting self- 

 denial.* 



PHILIP PEARSAI.L CARPENTER. 



Philip Pearsall Carpenter, who, by his valuable labors on 

 American mollusks and his residence in America, is fairly to be 

 enrolled on the list of American conchologists. was born in 

 Bristol, England, Nov. 4, 1819, and died at Montreal, Canada, 

 May 24, 1877. He belonged to a family whose members have 

 been renowned for their devotion to science, education, liberalism 

 in all good things^ and works of benevolence and charity. He 

 described himself as a born teacher, but a naturalist by chance. 

 But his interest in his favorite study developed early. When only 

 twelve years old he had accumulated a large cabinet and mas 

 tered the classification of the day. He studied at the University 

 of Edinburgh and at Manchester College, York, which became 

 affiliated with London University, from which he received his de 

 gree in 1841. In 1846-58 he labored in the ministry at Warring- 

 ton, and during this period prepared his classic Memoir on the 

 Mazatlan Shells, and his report to the British Association on the 

 state of our knowledge of the mollusk- fauna of the western coast 

 of America. In December, 1858, he visited the United States 

 and traveled extensively. In the winter of 1859-60 he came to 

 the Smithsonian Institution, where he spent some five months at 

 work upon the shell collections and delivered the lectures on Mol- 

 lusca which were afterward printed in the Smithsonian Report. 

 In 1860 he returned to England, where he married Miss Minna 

 Meyer, of Hamburg. This union, though entered into somewhat 

 late in life, was most happy. In 1863 he prepared a supplement 

 to his British Association Report of 1856, which has been most 

 useful to students of our west coast shells. 



* His portrait and an appreciative biogiaphical sketch by Thomas Bland, 

 of which I have made unsparing use, may be found in the American Jour 

 nal of Conchology, vol. i, pp. 191-204, 1865. 



