Many items of his published work appeared in the journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and in the Annals of Natural History.

He visited Ecole de Medecine in Paris in 1840 and joined the East India Company in 1841.

He served on the survey ship Palinurus from 1844 to 1846 when he became an assistant civil surgeon at Bombay.

He worked on the geology and paleontology of western India, founding a natural history society in 1856 that did not live very long.

[1] Carter retired to England in 1862 with the rank of Surgeon-Major and settled in his native place, Budleigh Salterton where he then married Anne Doyle from Sligo, Ireland in 1864 and they had a daughter Annie in 1866.