William Benjamin Carpenter, an English physiologist, son of the preceding, born in Exeter in 1813. He was originally intended for an engineer, but graduated as doctor of medicine at Edinburgh in 1839. One of his earliest papers, published in the "Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal," was on the "Voluntary and Instinctive Actions of Living Beings;" and in this and other early papers he laid the foundations of those views which he afterward developed more fully in his "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" (8vo, London, 1839). After receiving his diploma in Edinburgh, he settled in Bristol, and became lecturer on medical jurisprudence in the medical school of that city. In 1843 and subsequent years he produced the "Popular Cyclopaedia of Science," embracing the subjects of mechanics, vegetable physiology and botany, animal physiology, and zoology. These were professedly compilations, but they contain original views on many points of interest.

In 1846 he published "Principles of Human Physiology," which reached a 7th edition in 1869. In 1854 a 4th edition of his "Principles of Comparative Physiology" was published, followed by the "Principles of General Physiology." These two works, with that "On Human Physiology," form three independent volumes, comprising the whole range of biological science. The articles on the "Varieties of Mankind," the "Microscope," "Smell," "Taste," "Touch," "Sleep," "Life," "Nutrition," and "Secretion," published in the "Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology," are also from his pen. Having written much as a popular disseminator, as well as an original investigator of science, he has been accused of being a plagiarist and mere compiler. In answer to this charge, he claims, in the preface to the 3d edition of his "General and Comparative Physiology," the following facts and doctrines as his own: 1. The mutual connection of vital forces, and their relation to the physical. This doctrine is fully developed in a paper on the "Mutual Relations of the Vital and Physical Forces," in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1850. 2. The general doctrine that the truly vital operations of the animal as well as the vegetable organism are performed by the agency of im-transformed cells, which was first developed in an "Essay on the Origin and Functions of Cells," published in the "British and Foreign Medical Review" for 1843. 3. The organic structure of the shells of mollusca, echinoder-mat.a, and Crustacea, of which a full account is contained in the "Reports of the British Association" for 1844 and 1847. 4. The application of Von Baer's law of development from the general to the special to the interpretation of the succession of organic forms presented in geological time. 5. The relation between the two methods of reproduction, that by gemmation and that by sexual union, with the application of this doctrine to the phenomena of the so-called "alternations of generations;" first developed in the "British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review" for 1848 and 1849. 6. The relation between the different methods of sexual reproduction in plants; first developed in the same periodical for 1849. 7. The application of the doctrine of reflex action to the nervous system of iuvertebrata, especially articulated animals; first developed in the author's prize thesis, published in 1839. 8. The functional relations of the sensory ganglia to the spinal cord on the one hand, and to the cerebral hemispheres on the other. - In 1856 Dr. Carpenter published a work "On the Microscope, its Revelations and its Uses," in which he displayed the same industry, accuracy, and impartiality as in his other writings.

He has also published several interesting papers on the fossil forms of the family of foraminifera, and "An Introduction to the Study of the Fora-minifera." He has been professor of medical jurisprudence in University college, London; lecturer on general anatomy and physiology at the London hospital and school of medicine; and registrar to the university of London. In 1849 he gained the prize of 100 guineas offered for the best essay on the subject of "Alcoholic Liquors." This essay was published in 1850, and acquired great popularity among the advocates of total abstinence. He was editor for many years of the "British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review," and while thus occupied with writing he was also much engaged in lecturing. In 1872 he was president of the British association for the advancement of science. - Dr. Carpenter's more recent labors have been directed to the subject of submarine animal life, and the temperature and constitution of the oceanic waters at various depths, as indicated by the result of deep-sea dredgings.

In 1868 he made an expedition, in a government vessel fitted for this purpose, to the waters between the north of Scotland and the Faroe islands; in 1869 an expedition to the Atlantic ocean south and west of Ireland, and a second to the neighborhood of the Faroe islands; and he has since given a report of similar investigations in the waters of the Atlantic between Great Britain and Portugal, and in those of the Mediterranean. The results of these observations show that submarine animal life does not, as was formerly supposed, diminish rapidly at the depth of 100 fathoms, and nearly disappear at 300, but that it is abundant at much greater depths; living mollusks, crustaceans, and protozoa having been brought up by dredging from depths varying from 450 to 2,435 fathoms. He also found that in the North Atlantic, between the Hebrides and the Faroe islands, at from 400 to 550 fathoms' depth, there are warm and cold areas, the former having a minimum temperature of from 46° to 49° F., the latter from 32° to 33 3/4°; while the surface temperature is nearly the same in both, namely, from 50° to 52°. The deep waters of the Mediterranean, on the other hand, were found to have nearly a uniform temperature throughout, namely, between 54° and 56 1/2° F. The saltness and density of the waters of the Mediterranean, also, were found to be greatest near the bottom, while in the Atlantic they are greatest at or near the surface.