LI^'>^£AN SOCIETY OF LONDOX. 5 I 



" A^etenskn|is:il<a(leuiieii, Stockholm,*' as a postal address. 

 Nathor.st biiuself lias drawn up the official account of the pa]a?o- 

 botanical section in the quarto volume, ' Natiirliistoriska Riks- 

 museets histoiia, Stocklioliu * [printed at Uppsala, 1916], 

 pp 245-273. 



Secure in this quiet workroom, Nathorst sj)ent the rest of liis 

 official life, save when absent on exploring expeditions or scientific 

 visits. One great disadvantage he had, that of total deafness, 

 but it was marvellous to see how quickly he grasped the purport 

 of a question, even when only a few words had been written dow n 

 on his tablets. His daughter, Friiken Kuth Nathorst, frequently 

 acted as her father's interpreter by finger-speech. The writer 

 remembers tliat wheuXatborst was in London for the Centenary of 

 the Geological Society in 1907, he was taking charge of the Swedish 

 visitor by the tube railway from the dinner at the Criterion to 

 Cromwell Road for the reception, when, on emerging from the 

 exit of the station in the darkness, Nathorst instantly gripped his 

 arni and gave the name of the street they were entering. 



The new buildings were occupied in 1916 ; and the next year 

 Nathorst attained the age of 67, w hen he was obliged to retire on 

 account of age. He continued his work till the autumn of last 

 year, in spite of some slight heart-attacks, but at last he had to 

 lay down his pen, and after some weeks of increasing debility he 

 breathed liis last on the 20th January, 1920. 



Beginning in 1869 with a paper on the Cambrian rocks of 

 Scania, he was occupied with recent Arctic plants and plant- 

 remaiuo in several papers publislied in Swedish journals and one 

 in the English ' Journal of Botany' for 1873, meanwhile gradually 

 tending towards research on fossil plants, as his contribution to 

 Sweden's fossil flora in the Stockholm ' Handlingar' of 1S76, and 

 his interesting account of WiUiamsonia flowers from Yorkshire in 

 the ' Ofversigt ' for 1880 show. He was elected a i'oreign 

 Member of our Society in 1908. 



In later years he elaborated new methods of investigation, as 

 the application of collodion to fossils, which, when set, was stripped 

 off and mounted on slides, which, when examined by the micro- 

 scope, showed the stomata distinctly. 



As for his explorations, he visited Spitzbergen in 1870 and 

 1882, bringing home rich collections; in 1898 he led an important 

 expedition primarily to Beeren Island and Kung Karls Land in 

 search of Andree ; the account of the latter came out in two 

 volumes in 1900, and the Scientific ])ortion in a series of papers. 

 In 1875 he began a long series of papers on the KhfEtic flora 

 of Scania, and we owe to him much of our present-day knowledo'e 

 of the Arctic floras from Devonian folate Tertiary times; he also 

 published on Jurassic plants from Graham Island, Japan, New 

 Siberian islands, and the Yoi'kshire coast. A large number of 

 genera was establislied by him, amongst them Pseudoboniia, Lyco- 

 strobits, CepJuilotheca, WieJandiella, t'ljciidocepliahin, and Campto- 

 pteris ; to him also we owe the term Cycadophyta.j [B. D. J.] 



Hi. OF ILu. UB« 



