306 Ohituary Notices. 



from Bristol, tracing the organs of reprodnction from the 

 Jowest cryptogam to the most specialised flowering plant, 

 and showing an essential unity specialised as to details 

 throughout the vegetable kingdom. 



The last of these communications was illustrated by 

 many beautiful drawings, executed by Mary Carpenter, 

 who was also at this time a frequent donor to the Uni- 

 versity Herbarium. Indeed, the sister through life found 

 her pencil a favourite amusement, and she impressed on 

 tlie writer how greatly she found refreshment in her often 

 arduous and depressing philanthropic life wort from her 

 fossils or herbarium. Dried ferns, beautifully gummed 

 down on paper, or plant imprints on shales from the Coal 

 Measures, were amongst her educational apparatus success- 

 iully used to awaken the dawning intellects of city arabs. 

 Thus, indirectly, the influence of our Society may have 

 touched the great juvenile reformatory cause. 



Carpenter had Edward Forbes as a college companion. 

 Both were leading members of the Eoyal Physical, as well 

 as our own Society, and they also carried on as their life 

 works the investigation of marine life begun in Edinburgh. 

 Carpenter's graduation thesis, in 1839, on " The Physio- 

 logical Inferences to Vje deduced from the Structure of the 

 Nervous System of the Invertebrate Animals," attracted 

 the attention of Johannes Miiller, who inserted a transla- 

 tion of it in his Archiv for 1840. 



In the year 1839 Carpenter became an M.D. of Edin- 

 burgh, and published the Princijjles of General and Com- 

 jyarative Physiology, intended as an introduction to the 

 study of human physiology, and as a guide to the 

 philosophical pursuit of natural history. Dr Graham, in 

 his Report on the Progress of Botany, delivered 14th 

 March 1839, gave a discriminating eulogium of the work, 

 and pronounced it the most important botanical event of 

 the year, after the publication of the views of Schleiden. 

 Dr Carpenter remained for five years in Bristol, commencing 

 medical practice, and marrying in 1840. He communicated, 

 in July 1841, "An Outline of a Philosophical History of the 

 Beproductive Function in Plants and Animals," which was 

 afterwards published in the London and Edioiburyh Monthly 

 Journal of Medical Science, vol. i. p. 653. After this, busy 



