ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OP THE PRESIDENT. 4 1 



a school kept by his father, a Unitarian ^Minister in that town. 

 His early bent was to engineering, but ultimately he was attracted 

 into the medical profession, receiving his education for that pur- 

 pose at University College, London, and at the University of Edin- 

 burgh, where he graduated as M.D. in 1839. For a time Dr. Car- 

 penter practised medicine in Bristol, but in the year 1844, en- 

 couraged by the success which had attended his first important 

 work, ' The Principles of General and Comparative Physiology,' he 

 decided to devote himself to a literary and scientific career, and 

 removed to London, where he was appointed Pullerian Professor of 

 Physiology at the Royal Institution, and to a Professorship at 

 University College. In 1851 he was appointed Principal of Uni- 

 versity HaU, which office he held till 1859. He resigned these 

 Professorships three years before this date on his election to the 

 llegistrarship of the University of London. In this oflice his 

 varied culture, great powers of organization, calm judgment, and 

 courtesy of manner were of the highest service to the University, 

 and he occupied this post uiitil the year 1879, when he retired on a 

 well-earned pension. 



Though a very large part of Dr. Carpenter's busy life was devoted 

 to the study of Physiology, and thus lies outside the scope of our 

 Society, he was deeply interested in the problems of Geology, and has 

 laid its students under lasting obligations. His investigation of 

 the microscopic structure of the shells of the MoUusca, his researches 

 on Echinodermata, his studies of the Poraminifera, above all the 

 magnificent volume describing and figuring the exquisite structures 

 of these lowly organisms, published, with the aid of Professor 

 liupert Jones and Mr. W. K. Parker, among the serial volumes of the 

 Hay Society, have been of inestimable value to geologists. In him 

 we may recognize one of those pioneers and masters in microscopical 

 work, who have indicated how important in the world of nature 

 is the " task of the least." Dr. Carpenter's name will also long be 

 associated with the difiicult yet fascinating controversy concerning 

 Eozoon canadense, which abnormal structure he was among the 

 earliest to claim as an organism and as belonging to the Foraminifera. 

 At the time of his death he was engaged upon an exhaustive memoir, 

 in which the results of his later researches were to be embodied, 

 but this unhappily has been left in a very incomplete state. Of the 

 question itself, whether Eozoon bo truly an organism or only a most 

 singular mineral simulation, we may truly say, adhuc sub judice lis 

 est ; but whichever way it be decided, it will hardly diminish the 

 value of Dr. Carpenter's researches ; for even if this supposed glimpse 

 of the dawn of life prove to be an illusion, yet in the quest much 

 wiU have been learnt, and the investigator will not have returned 

 empty-handed. 



But Dr. Carpenter has another claim on the gratitude of geologists. 

 It was very largely owing to his perseverance and activity that those 

 deep-sea researches were undertaken which at last culminated in 

 the ' Challenger ' expedition. In the earlier of these Dr. Carpenter 

 took part, spending in this way no inconsiderable portions of his 



