After receiving a medical education under his father and at Guy's Hospital, London, where he gained several honours and prizes and obtained the ordinary medical qualifications, he returned to Polperro to assist his father, and employed his leisure in careful zoological study.
He contributed the third part (on the zoophytes) to the Cornish Fauna, written by his father; and an account of the natural history of West Cornwall to J. S. Courtney's Guide to Penzance, 1845.
Other interesting papers on zoophytes, crustacea, and fishes were contributed by him to the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, the Reports of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, The Zoologist, Annals of Natural History, &c., all of which are recorded in Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, i.
Among these may be mentioned observations on the zoophytes of Cornwall, on the development of the frog, on the metamorphosis of the decapod crustaceans, and the natural history of the mackerel in the Polytechnic Reports for 1842 and 1844; and on the nest of the fifteen-spined stickleback in the Penzance Natural History Transactions, ii.
From 1848 onwards he was curator of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, and contributed to its Transactions several valuable papers, as well as annual reports.