No. 8.] NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 445 



ANNUAL MEETING. 



The Annual Meeting of this Society was held on the 18th of 

 May, 1878, and after the rending of the minutes, the President 

 delivered the following address: 



ADDRESS BY PRINCIPAL DAWSON, LL.D., F.R.S. 



It becomes- us in our present meeting to commemorate the 

 names and services of eminent Naturalists associated with this 

 Society who have passed away in the course of the year. 



Dr. Philip Pearsall Carpenter was a son of the late Dr. Lant 

 Carpenter of Bristol, and a member of a family distinguished 

 for brilliant gifts and philanthropic enterprise. His brother. Dr. 

 William B. Carpenter of London, and his sister lately deceased, 

 the well known philanthropist, Mary Carpenter, need only to be 

 mentioned in illustration of this. Dr. Carpenter was born in 

 Bristol in 18P, and was thus fifty-six years of age at the time of 

 his lamented decease. In 1865 he selected our city as his place 

 of residence, and soon became one of our best known and most 

 beloved citizens, distinguished more particularly for his fervent 

 devotion to temperance and sanitary reform ; and though much 

 remains to be done in both of these benevolent efforts, he lived 

 to see great good accomplished, largely by his own personal 

 exertions. 



But it was as a man of science that he was most widely known. 

 He had devoted himself more especially to the study of the 

 Mollusca, His collection of shells was one of the finest private 

 collections extant, and his extensive knowledge and critical dis- 

 crimination with reference to species and generic types, were un- 

 surpassed anywhere. He was ready at all times to give aid and 

 guidance with respect to any difficulty of determination either in 

 recent or fossil forms; and his familiar expositions of the struc- 

 tures and habits of his favourites, and the way in which he made 

 clear and intelligible their functions and modes of life, must be 

 fresh in the memories of many of our members. We all esteemed 

 him highly as a naturalist and loved him as a man, and we 

 should' thank him for the noble legacy he has lei't to our Univer- 

 sity in his magnificent collection of shells. While engaged in 

 the work of classification and arrangement of this collection, Dr. 

 Carpenter was occupied in prep iring notes for publication on 

 special points, and in determining and naming collections which 

 had been placed in his hands by societies, institutions and indi- 



