64 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



explorations carried out by the ' Porcupine.' And, again, in 1875 

 he was one of the scientific party on board H.M.S. ' Valorous ' 

 which accompanied Sir George Nares' Arctic Expedition as far as 

 Disco, for the purpose of sounding and dredging in. Davis Strait 

 and the North Atlantic. 



With such an education and an inborn love for natural history, 

 it is not surprising that Herbert Carpenter devoted himself with 

 enthusiasm to the work by which he has built up an imperishable 

 reputation. He was led to attach himself to the study of Echino- 

 derm Morphology, and especially to the selection of the Crinoidea 

 as the subject of his life's work, whilst studying in the laboratory 

 of Prof. Semper at Wiirzburg in 1875. Semper and Ludwig 

 having criticised certain statements of Dr. W. B. Carpenter 

 regarding the anatomy of Antedon, Herbert Carpenter not unna- 

 turally made himself acquainted with the points under discussion 

 as well as with the preparations upon which the views of his 

 father's critics were based ; and this resulted in the publication 

 of two papers wherein the contending opinions were reconciled. 

 Eurther work in the same direction, upon material furnished by 

 Prof. Semper, followed, and led to the production, after two 

 years of careful investigation, of Herbert Carpenter's important 

 memoir " On the Grenus Actinometra,'^ which was published in 

 1879 in the ' Transactions ' of this Society. Once launched in 

 these studies, which Carpenter grappled with such vigour and 

 enthusiasm, the direction of his life's work seemed determined. 

 The preparation of the Report upon the Comatulse collected 

 by the ' Challenger ' Expedition was placed in his hands by 

 Sir Wyville Thomson ; and on the latter's death in 1882, the 

 Eeport on the Stalked Crinoids, which Thomson had himself 

 intended to write, was also entrusted to Carpenter. These two 

 magnificent monographs, which appeared in 1884 and 1888, are 

 masterpieces of careful investigation, and are works upon which 

 British science will long look with pride. 



Between 1875 and the time of his death a long array of papers 

 on recent and fossil Crinoids, as well as on general Echinoderm 

 morphology, were produced, which are printed in the publications 

 of this Society, and of the Eoyal, Geological, and Zoological 

 Societies, and in various English and foreign journals open to such 

 contributions. In addition to this, Carpenter was joint author 

 with Mr. Eobert Etheridge, junr., of the Catalogue of the 

 Blastoidea in the British Museum, which is a model of careful 

 descriptive palaeontology. The number of our Journal which, 

 by a sad coincidence, was published on the day of his funeral, 

 contained his last three papers. One of these treated of certain 

 points in the Morphology of the Cystidea and is a memoir full of 

 mature knowledge and critical reasoning, based on extensive 

 observation, which shows how ably he was proceeding to fulfil 

 the expectations of palaeontologists towards preparing a mono- 

 graph on that difficult group also. 



He was elected a Eellow of the Eoyal Society in 1885 ; and he 



