Abstract
WE regret to announce the death at Montreal, in his fifty-eighth year, of Dr. Philip P. Carpenter, formerly of Warrington, one of the most scientific conchologists of our time. Taking up this pursuit, in the first instance, merely as a recreative occupation, he was led by his friend, Dr. J. E. Gray, who saw his remarkable aptitude for it, to make it one of the principal objects of his life; and he brought to it a mind trained in those scientific habits which prevented him from ever becoming the mere species-monger, whilst specially delighting in that study of minute detail which is required for the true determination of specific types and their geographical distribution. It was well observed by Dr. Hooker, in his introductory essay to the “Flora of New Zealand,”that “a wider range of knowledge and a greater depth of study are required to prove those dissimilar forms to be identical, which any superficial observer can separate by words and a name;” and this wide range of knowledge and thoroughness of research were the essential characteristics of all Dr. P. P. Carpenter's conchological work. The opportunity having occurred to him more than twenty-five years ago, while residing at Warrington, of studying a large collection of shells formed at Mazatlan, in California—after Mr. Cuming had selected from it what he considered the new specific types, which he caused to be described by Mr. C. B. Adams—Dr. P. P. Carpenter was impressed with the fact that Mr. Cuming had left behind him those intermediate forms, the study of which would prove that many of his supposed species are mere varieties; and having brought the importance of such study before the Zoological Section of the British Association, he was requested to prepare a report on the present state of our knowledge with regard to the mollusca of the west coast of North America, which was published in the Transactions of the Association for 1856, and at once took rank as a most able and conscientious work. A Supplementary Report on this subject, marked by. the same “wide range of knowledge and depth of study,” was published in 1863. Besides these, several monographs, prepared by Dr. P. P. Carpenter on particular groups of shells in the Cumingian Museum, were published in the Zoological Proceedings. So high was the reputation which his Reports acquired for him among American naturalists that he was invited by Prof. Henry of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington to assist him in the arrangement of its national collection of shells; and having been led in 1865 to take up his residence in Montreal, he was subsequently engaged in similar work for other museums in the Northern States. He soon acquired in the city of his adoption the character he had left behind him in Warrington, of being ever ready for any kind of philanthropic labour; and especially distinguished himself by his untiring advocacy, through evil as well as good report, of the sanitary reforms which he saw to be greatly needed. There is reason to believe that the typhoid fever which brought his useful life to a close was engendered in the foul air of the building in which he was accustomed to carry on his scientific work.
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Dr. Philip P. Carpenter . Nature 16, 84 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/016084e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/016084e0