1899] AXEL THEODOR VON GOES 4" 



AXEL THEODOR VON GOES. 



Born July 3, 1835, Roks, Ostergotland, Sweden; 

 Died August 1897, Stockholm. 



Of so retiring a disposition was this excellent zoologist that even his death 

 remained unnoticed for a year and a half by his colleagues in this country. It 

 may not be too late for a few notes. The son of a nature-loving physician, 

 Goes studied medicine at Upsala from 1854 to 1860, and in 1861 joined 

 Torell's Spitzbergen expedition as naturalist and surgeon. On his return he 

 joined Prof. Malmgren of Helsingfors in a research into the marine fauna 

 around the Norwegian Finmark. In the summer of 1862, with a grant from 

 the Swedish Academy of Sciences, he investigated the fauna off the west coast 

 of Sweden. Having taken his licentiate examination at Upsala in 1864, he 

 obtained the post of government and garrison physician to the former colony of 

 Sweden on St. Barthelemy in the West Indies. Here he spent nearly five years, 

 working on the fauna and flora of the Caribbean Sea, both from its greatest 

 depths and from the shores of the island. His important collections are pre- 

 served in the State Natural History Museum at Stockholm. He returned to 

 Sweden in 1870, bringing with him a wife, the daughter of the governor of the 

 colony. Till 1895 he served as provincial physician in various districts, and 

 then retired to pursue his natural history studies in Stockholm. As physician, 

 Goes devoted much attention to the broader aspects of national hygiene, and 

 was a strong advocate of the restriction of reproduction in those physically 

 defective. 



He was a devoted and able student of the Foraminifera, and his paper on this 

 group from the Caribbean waters was a valuable contribution to the many 

 attempts to bring into line the numerous variations to which authors had 

 wrongly accorded specific rank. 



Our information is mostly obtained from the Swedish medical magazine 

 Halsovdnnen, to which, as well as to Eira, Land och Folk, and Ymer, he 

 contributed many articles of more general interest. 



The deaths are also announced of Otto Bockeler, an investigator of the 

 Cyperaceae, at Yarel in Oldenburg, on March 5, in the 96th year of his age ; 

 at Rome, Count Abbe Francesco Castracane degli Antelminelli (1817- 

 1899), one of the leading authorities on diatoms ; Joseph J. Dowling, on Feb- 

 ruary 2, at Foxrock, Dublin, a keen ornithologist and frequent contributor to 

 the Field, and La/id and Water, during the last twenty years ; Sir Douglas 

 Galton, K.C.B., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D. (1822-1899), general secretary of the 

 British Association for 25 years, and president in 1895, a renowned authority 

 and progressive worker in connection with sanitation ; Otto Gelert, system- 

 atic botanist in Copenhagen, on 'March 20 ; Sylvanus Hanley, the well- 

 known conchologist ; John Lee, botanist, January 20, at the age of 49 ; Dr. 

 Oliver Marcy, professor of natural history in North-Western University, 

 Evanston, U.S.A. ; Charles Naudin, member of the Paris Academy of 

 Sciences, and believed by some to have anticipated Darwin as regards the idea 

 of natural selection, at the age of 83 ; Dr. P. L. Rijke, of the University of 

 Leyden, 86 years of age ; on February 27, Dr. Gustav Schoch, docent in 

 entomology in the Polytechnikum in Zurich ; Joseph Stevens, for some 

 years honorary curator of the Reading Museum, and a student of archaeology 

 and geology, on April 7, at the age of 81 ; J. H. Wibbe, botanist, on January 

 7, at Schenectady, N.Y., at the age of 60 ; Franz Woenig, the botanist, at 

 Leipzig; Surgeon -Major George Charles Wallich, a pioneer in deep-sea 

 exploration, on March 31, in his 84th year. 



