Nov. 26, 1885] 



NA TURE 



83 



atives of the respective Committees, and to qualify himself as 

 far as possible for the honourable post of local correspondent. 

 It is in return for the prospect of this very valuable assistance 

 that the position of a member of the General Committee is 

 granted to each delegate, and the privilege is accorded of having 

 published in the Reports of the British Association a catalog le 

 of the local investigations of the Society which he represents. 

 Hereafter the Corresponding Societies Committee will take into 

 consideration the advisability of not recommending for re- 

 election those Societies whose delegates fail to attend the 

 meetings of the Conference without adequate explanation. 



These views were expressed by tlie Chairman at the second 

 meeting of the Conference, and they appeared to be fully in 

 harmony with the feelings of the delegates who were present. 



The above e.xtracts contain all that is of general im- 

 portance in the circular letter. Whether or no the Con- 

 ference of Delegates will grow into an important branch 

 of the British .'\ssociation remains to be seen. The rules 

 under which it is established ought to secure it from the' 

 danger of provoking the jealousy of Local .Societies by 

 the assumption of a dictatorial attitude towards them and 

 by interfering in their concerns ; on the other hand they 

 as surely prevent it from growing into the anomalous office 

 of an iiiipcrhim in impcrio as regards the British Associa- 

 tion. Consequently the success of the Conference appears 

 wholly to depend on an abundant and continuous supply 

 of good work being found for it to do, and on a sufficiency 

 of zeal among the delegates to perform their duties 

 efficiently. Fr.^ncis G.\lton 



DR. CARPENTER, C.B., F.R.S. 

 A SHORT sketch of the life and work of the eminent 

 -^~^ naturalist who has recently passed from among us 

 will be welcome to the readers of N.^TURE. 



William Benjamin Carpenter was born at Exeter in 

 1813, and was the fourth child and eldest son of Dr. Lant 

 Carpenter, a Unitarian minister. His sister, Mary Car- 

 penter, who died a few years since, achieved the most 

 important work as a philanthropist, in relation to the 

 treatment of prisoners and to questions affecting our 

 Indian fellow-subjects, and will be remembered by future 

 generations with no less gratitude than her brother. 



In his childhood Dr. Carpenter received an excellent 

 education, comprising both classics and the principles of 

 physical science, at the school established by his father 

 at Bristol, and it was his intention to adopt the profession 

 of a civil engineer. He was, however, persuaded to 

 accept the opportunity offered by a medical practitioner, 

 Mr. Esthn, of Bristol, and to enter on the study of medi- 

 cine as apprentice to that gentleman. Shortly after this 

 he was sent, as companion to one of Mr. Estlin's patients, 

 to the West Indies, and on his return from this visit he 

 entered, at the age of twenty, the medical classes of 

 University College, London. After passing the examina- 

 tions of the College of Surgeons and the Apothecaries' 

 Society he proceeded to Edinburgh, where he graduated 

 as M.D. in 1839. 



His graduation thesis on '• The Physiological Inferences 

 to be deduced from the Structure of the Nervous System 

 of Invertebrated Animals" excited considerable attention, 

 especially on account of the views which he advanced as 

 to the reflex function of the ganglia of the ventral cord of 

 Arthropoda. 



From the first Dr. Carpenter's work showed the tend- 

 ency of his mind to seek for large generalisations and the 

 development of philosophical principles. He was a natu- 

 ral philosopher in the widest sense of the term — one who 

 was equally familiar with the fundamental doctrines of 

 physics and with the phenomena of the concrete sciences 

 of astronomy, geology, and biology. It was his aim, by 

 the use of the widest range of knowledge of the facts of 

 Nature, to arrive at a general conception of these pheno- 

 mena as the outcome of uniform and all-pervading laws. 

 His interest in the study of living things was not therefore 



primarily that of the artist and poet so much as that of 

 the philosopher, and it is remarkable that this interest 

 should have carried him, as it did, into minute and elabo- 

 rate investigations of form and structure. Although some 

 of his scientific memoirs are among the most beautifully 

 illustrated works which have been published by any natu- 

 ralist, yet it is noteworthy that he himself was not a 

 draughtsman, but invariably employed highly skilled 

 artists to prepare his illustrations for him. Yet we cannot 

 doubt that the man who, with his dominant mental ten- 

 dency to far-reaching speculations, yet gave to the world 

 the minute and ingenious analysis of the beautiful struc- 

 ture of the shells of Foraminifera, had an artist's love of 

 form, and that the part of his life's work (for it was only a 

 part among the abundant results of his extraordinary 

 energy) which was devoted to the sea and the investiga- 

 tion of some of its fascinating living contents, was thus 

 directed by a true love of Nature in which ulterior philo- 

 sophy had no share. 



Two books, Dr. Carpenter has told us, exerted great 

 influence over his mind in his student days : they were 

 Sir John Herschel's " Discourse on the Study of Natural 

 Philosophy '' and Lyell's '' Principles of Geology" — that 

 great book to which we owe the even greater books of 

 Charles Darwin. Taking the " Principles" in some way 

 as his model. Dr. Carpenter produced in 1839 his first 

 systematic work, under the title " Principles of General 

 and Comparative Physiology, intended as an Introduction 

 to the Study of Human Physiology and as a Guide to the 

 Philosophical Pursuit of Natural History." Admirable 

 as was the execution of this work in many ways, its great 

 iTierit lay in the conception of its scope. It was in fact 

 the first attempt to recognise and lay down the lines of a 

 science of " Biology " in an educational form. Carpenter's 

 " Comparative Physiology " is the general or elementary 

 " Biology " of the present day — traced necessarily upon 

 the less secure foundations which the era of its production 

 permitted, viz. one year only subsequent to the date of 

 Schwann's immortal '" Microscopical Researches." 



For five years Dr. Carpenter remained in Bristol, com- 

 mencing medical practice and marrying in 1840; but in 

 1844, feeling a distaste for the profession of medicine, he 

 removed to London in order to devote himself entirely to 

 a literary and scientific career. He was encouraged to 

 take this step by the success which his " Comparative 

 Physiology " obtained, a secontj edition having been 

 called for within two years of the publication of the first. 

 He was appointed FuUerian Professor of Physiology in 

 the Royal Institution during his first year in London, and 

 Professor and Lecturer at University College and at the 

 London Hospital, whilst he was also elected a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society. 



In 185 1 Dr. Carpenter became Principal of University 

 Hall, the residential institution attached to University 

 College, where he remained until 1859. During this 

 period he remodelled his treatise on Physiology, issuing 

 the more general biological portion as " Comparative 

 Physiology," whilst that portion dealing with the special 

 physiology of man and the higher animals appeared as 

 his well-1-cnown " Human Phj'siology,'' which subse- 

 quently ran through many editions. The " Human 

 Physiology" is remarkable in the first place for the 

 chapters on the physiology of the nervous system, and 

 especially for the theories enunciated with regard ic the 

 relations of mind and brain, and the attempt to assign 

 particular activities to particular portions of the cerebral 

 structure. In arriving at his conclusions Dr. Carpenter 

 had to depend on arguments drawn from the facts of 

 comparative anatomy and of diseased or abnormal con- 

 ditions in man. Tliere is no doubt at the present day of 

 the acuteness which he displayed in his treatment of the 

 subject, and of the truth in a general way of the results 

 which he formulated. Experiment and a wider range of 

 observation have to some extent corrected — but on the 



