In this self-imposed task it would still have been impossible for Dr. Carpenter to accomplish any thing very noteworthy, had he continued to be distracted by the multifarious engagements which occupied so much of his time during the first ten or twelve years of his stay in London. But, fortunately for him and for science, he was appointed, in 1856, registrar of the University of London. Though the duties of this office have considerably increased since he entered upon them, they still leave him many intervals of leisure for his favorite pursuits, while the salary attached to it is such as enables him to forego other engagements.
The Royal Medal awarded to Dr. Carpenter in 1861, by the Council of the Royal Society, was a well-earned recognition of the important services he has rendered to the cause of truth. And he has continued to lay us under additional obligations. For to him, as to other devoted students of Nature, the conquest of one field is but the prelude to yet further conquests. He has latterly been much occupied with a subject of special interest; to wit, the investigations connected with the deep-sea dredging expeditions, carried on in one of her Britannic Majesty's ships, and conducted by him, Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, and Prof. Wyville Thompson. Though no final conclusions have as yet been arrived at, it seems to be clearly indicated that there is a vast sheet of the lowest type of animal life, which probably extends over the whole of the warmer regions of the sea. And there can be little doubt that, conducted by such experienced naturalists, these expeditions will result in correcting and enlarging our present knowledge regarding the distribution of life on the globe.
Dr. Carpenter is a man of much versatility of scientific attainment, of a philosophical cast of mind, inclining him to take broad views, with a good capacity of original investigations (although this is seen more in the speculative and generalizing field than in special experimental researches), and, withal, he is an unusually clear and able scientific writer. His election to the presidency of the British Association, at its Edinburgh meeting last year, was one of the highest honors that British science has to bestow. To guide the deliberations of the largest and ablest scientific body in the world, and to occupy the chair formerly filled by such men as Herschel, Whewell, Airy, Rosse, Stokes, Grove, Hooker, Huxley, and Thompson, is a tribute to Dr. Carpenter's worth and character which is doubtless as gratifying as it is just and deserved.
