William Benjamin CariJcntcr. 305 



were prominent at our early meetings, held within the then 

 new University buildings, besides being active workers at 

 committees or herbarium. If morphology now presses so 

 greatly to the front, pushing back the classificatory studies 

 of our founders, and almost making our symbolism of 

 Linnseus and Jussieu somewhat antique, be it remembered 

 that the germs of Carpenter's Principles of General and 

 Comparative Physiology — the first published British 

 manual of the new science of biology — may be found in our 

 modest First and Second Annual Reports. 



At the third meeting of the Society, held on 12th May 

 1836, Mr Carpenter read a communication on the connec- 

 tion between electricity and vegetable life, arguing that, 

 though dominated by the principle of vitality, electricity 

 may have produced organic chemical compounds ; and pro- 

 pounding hypothetical views on the food of plants. This 

 was followed at the July meeting by a dissertation on the 

 structural analogies betw^ixt the principal groups of the 

 animal and vegetable kingdoms, and the application to 

 plants of the laws of development which have been 

 established in the structure of animals. At the opening 

 meeting of our second session, Mr Carpenter enforced the 

 necessity of the Society making a collection of vegetable 

 monstrosities as a study essential to the philosophic botanist, 

 and referred at the same time to LFnger's researches on 

 the parasitic fungi. In his report on the progress of 

 botany for the year. Professor Graham devotes a large 

 portion of his space to Mr Carpenter's paper in the July 

 number of the Edinhurgh Ncio Philosophical Journal, dwell- 

 ing with much approbation on its conclusions — 1st, that 

 a special function arises only out of one more general, and 

 this by a gradual change ; 2ud, that in all cases where the 

 different functions are strongly specialised, the general 

 structure retains more or less the primitive community of 

 function which originally characterised it ; and the only 

 postulates which Dr Graham could not grant were on 

 collateral subjects, which Mr Carpenter had not personally 

 studied. In April 1837, IMr Carpenter made remarks on 

 the forms of the organs of respiration in different classes of 

 plants and at different periods of their growth. And in 

 the session of 1838, at two meetings, papers were sent 



