Prksidknt's Adurkss — Skcts. H and C. 01 



the Mafoola near Delagoa Bay, aiul his conipaiiioii tVoin Gialiaiiistown, 

 Ijenjamiii Green, was also lost in Natal. 



Atherstono first attended Stephenson's school at the old liljrary,* 

 l)ut in ISlM) he went U^ Uitenhage, where he attended the acadeiny 

 kept by Dr. Tnnes. He was apprenticed to his father in 1831, an«l in 

 1S34, on the outbreak of the second Kafir war, he acted as staff' 

 jnedical oflicer under Sir Benjamin D'Urban, anil received his certifi- 

 cate as a (|ualified medical man in 183(5, on the eve of his departure 

 for Eui'ope. Before he left, he records riding out with his father to 

 Riebeck East, where they met Piet Retief, then on his way to Natal, 

 with the object of trying to turn him back from his ill-starred journey. 

 In tlie latter half of 1836, and in 1837, Atherstone was in Dublin 

 attending lectures, and in 1838 in London, where he passed the Royal 

 'College of .Surgeons examination. He was now joined by the late 

 Fred. W. Barber, and together they travelled on the Continent, 

 .spending a year in Paris. In 1839 Atherstone took his degree of 

 M.D. at Heidelberg, and returned to South Africa in the Roh'rrt Small, 

 1000 tons, arriving in Grahamstown in December, 1839. 



From this time onwards, with only one visit to Europe in 1875-76, 

 till his death in 1898, Dr. W. G. Atherstone's whole energies were 

 'devoted to the land of his adoption, and especially to Grahamstown. 

 The foregoing particulars, which are extracted from his own notes, 

 show us that in every way Dr. .Atherstone was fitted to enrich what- 

 ever community he chose to dwell in. That he chose Grahamstown 

 will ever be remembered in grateful recognitio)i, for in those days there 

 were not many men of light and leading in South Africa who possessed 

 both an intimate knowledge of the country and its inhal)itants as well 

 as a sound scientific training, and Atherstone had both. From the 

 first he was (juick to appreciate the manifold interests which this unex- 

 plored land presented to the observant eye, but I must resolutely keep 

 in the background the purely scientific aspect of his activities — reluc- 

 tantly, for I could have shown him botanisnig with Dr. Pappe, bird- 

 liunting with Layard, geologising with Dunn, Seeley, Rubidge and a 

 host of others, and spending golden hours with Anthony Trollope. I 

 -could have shown him also founder and often president of the Medico- 

 Chirurgical Society izi 1855 — afterwards the Scientific and Literary 

 -Societ}^ with 150 members — afterwards the Albany Natural History 

 Society, now the Albany Museum ; the same with the South African 

 •Geologists Association in 1888; I could have shown him watching 

 the infanc}' of the ostrich farming at Heatherton Towers and Table 

 Farm, invesj;,igating, with liis father, horse-sickness and tick-fever : I 

 could have shown him as an artist and as an accomplished musician. 

 But all these phases of his activities must wait to be written down in a 

 form more extended than I can allow for them here. 1 have men- 

 tioned them at all, because I want to show Dr. Atherst(ine as one who 

 was responsixe to every impulse from the higher, brighter, more intel- 



" This bniMiug is famous as the tirst Iniilding erected in ( Jraliainstown ; it 

 wvas originally useil as a gaol, and is still staniliiig. 



d2 



