90 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



rail, and the travellers rested for a while at Heidelberg. 

 There his scientific imagination was kindled by the wonders 

 of the spectroscope in the laboratory of Professors Kirchhoff 

 and Btinscn ; and a supper-party in the Castle grounds, 

 given by them in his honour, stamped itself in his memory 

 as one of the happiest evenings of his life. At St. Moritz he 

 found the stimulus which his constitution so much needed. 

 His vitality reasserted itself; the specific malady was sub 

 dued and kept at bay, though it tended occasionally to 

 break out again in after-years ; and when, to avoid the ad 

 vancing cold of the latter part of August, he moved down 

 to Bellaggio, he drank in deep draughts of beauty from the 

 mountains and the lake which completed the refreshment 

 of mind and heart. 



In June of this year Dr. Carpenter had presented to 

 the Royal Society the first portion of a memoir on the 

 Rosy Feather-star, which embodied the results of his 

 vacation studies at Arran for many years previously. 

 These had been carried on in conjunction with Professor 

 Wyvillc Thomson, who had already published an account 

 of his observations on the earliest larval stages of the 

 Feather-star. Dr. Carpenter s memoir took up the subject 

 at the point to which it had been carried by Professor 

 Thomson, and made known two important discoveries, one 

 of which found immediate acceptance. But the other, re 

 specting the nervous system of the Crinoid type, remained 

 without notice for many years; and when, in 1875, he 

 stated his views more fully, they were strongly opposed 

 by the principal continental students of Crinoidea. They 

 gradually found acceptance, however, and were publicly 

 adopted by his chief opponent, but a few weeks after his 

 death, in 1885. 



But the joint work of the two friends on the Rosy 

 Feather-star was destined to bear yet more important 



