NOTES 



Pro!. A. G. Nathorst (1850—1921) (Marie Carmichael Stopes, D.Sc.) 



Prof. A. G. Nathorst, the famous Swedish professor whose 

 recent death we mourn, was, while he Hved, the world's most 

 distinguished Palseobotanist. He was more than a Palseo- 

 botanist ; he was also a great geographer and geologist, who 

 received much honour in his own country. His lamented 

 death thins the already decimated ranks of Palaeobotanists, 

 and leaves the younger workers in that science without the 

 guidance of one of the most sincere and generous of colleagues. 



Nathorst came of a family originally of English descent, 

 which took root in Sweden in the eighteenth century, and 

 A. G. Nathorst's father and grandfather were both cultivated 

 men, his father being a Professor of Agriculture. 



Nathorst, who was born in 1850, joined the Geological 

 Survey of Sweden in 1873. In 1884, Sweden (already a pioneer 

 land in Palaeobotany through Swedenborg's interest in the 

 subject) created an honorary professorship in Palaeobotany in 

 appreciation of Nathorst's work. 



He was also Honorary Fellow of more than thirty foreign 

 learned societies, and received, among many other medals, the 

 Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London. He took 

 part in several famous Polar expeditions to Spitzbergen, 

 Greenland, Konigkarsland and elsewhere. 



By the early age of nineteen he had already published the 

 first of his scientific papers on Geology, and his wonderfully 

 accurate and beautiful work on a variety of subjects (but pre- 

 eminently palseobotanical) total altogether close on 400 

 original memoirs. 



In addition to originating, securing the foundation of and 

 seeing the completion of the first adequate Palseobotanical 

 Institute in Europe, Nathorst's help and inspiration permeates 

 work by almost every other palseobotanical researcher in every 

 geological horizon. No one can teach Palaeobotany adequately 

 without constantly referring to him, and in particular to the 

 magnificently illustrated series of memoirs dealing with the 

 early Mesozoic floras of the Horsandstone, from which he 

 reconstructed fascinating specimens with previously unknown 

 morphology. 



ICO 



