42 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



vacations. Twenty years since, the depths and principal contours of 

 the great ocean-basins were almost unknown, their abysses were 

 deemed lifeless, their currents and temperatures were very in- 

 adequately determined. On all these points a flood of light has 

 been thrown, so that many as are the mysteries yet unsolved, the 

 foundations are now laid firm and sure on which the labourers of 

 the future may build. 



Dr. Carpenter was elected a Fellow of our Society in 1847, and 

 received the Lyell Medal in 1883 ; he was elected into the Royal 

 Society in 1844, and was awarded a Royal Medal in 1861, He was 

 made a C.B. in 1879, received in 1871 the honorary degree of LL.D. 

 from the University of Edinburgh, and was President of the British 

 Association at the Brighton meeting in 1872. In the following year 

 he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Institute of France. 



Dr. Carpenter belonged to a family more than one member of 

 which has made some mark in the world. His brother, the late Dr. 

 P. P. Carpenter, was eminent for his knowledge of conchology ; and 

 the philanthropic labours of his sister Miss Mary Carpenter will long 

 be held in grateful remembrance. More than one of his sons has 

 imitated his father's devotion to science, one of whom. Dr. P. H. 

 Carpenter, has contributed to our Proceedings some very valuable 

 papers on the Echinodermata. 



The general character of Dr. Carpenter's mind has been so well 

 described in a feeling and appreciative notice, that I shall venture 

 to quote from it a few sentences : — " He was a natural 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 astronomy, geology, and biology. It was 

 his aim, by the use of the widest range of knowledge of the facts of 

 [N'ature, to arrive at a general conception of these phenomena as the 

 outcome of uniform and all-pervading laws"*. To these I may add 

 some other characteristics which, during a friendly intercourse of 

 full fifteen years, specially impressed themselves on my own mind. 

 One w^as the comprehensiveness, I might almost say the versatility, 

 of his mind. His interests were esceptionally wide, his know- 

 ledge surprisingly multifarious ; yet the latter was always accurate 

 and thorough. Dr. Carpenter was no narrow scientist, but a man 

 of an unusually large general culture ; for whom music, arts, poetry, 

 philosophy, all had their charms. His accurate memory, his rich 

 and varied stores of knowledge gave an especial value to his lectures 

 and conversation, though perhaps they sometimes produced an 

 exuberance in the treatment of a subject, and caused him to forget 

 that the interest of his listeners was less unflagging than his own ; 

 yet this excess, if such it were, was only the natural outcome of Dr. 

 Carpenter's conscientious thoroughness and absorption in his work, 

 which caused him to forget both himself and his hearers, and resulted 

 from his high sense of duty, which forbade him to deal super- 

 ficially with any subject, even the most ordinary. Duty, indeed, as 

 the writer I have already quoted observes, " was the most dominant 

 "^ Prof. E. E-ay Lankester in ' Nature,' Nov. 26, 1885. 



