Oct. 23, 1879] 



NATURE 



607 



volume of genuine intei-est and of much scientific value, 

 well provided with maps, and rendered attractive by 

 numerous illustrations. 



Mr. Leslie gives a preliminary account of the life of 

 his hero, mostly in the latter's own words, and this is 

 perhaps the most interesting part of the volume. Many 

 of our readers do not need to be told that Prof. Norden- 

 skjbld is a remarkable man, altogether apart from the 

 long series of explorations in which he has done so much 

 for a scientific knowledge of the Arctic regions. Nor- 

 denskjold is a native of Finland, having bean born in 

 1832, the descendant of an old family of good position. 

 His father was chief of the Mining Department of Fin- 

 land, and a well-known naturalist. Other members of 

 this family were eminent in various departments of lite- 

 rature and science, and the grandfather. Col. Norden- 

 skjold, built a peculiar residence at Furgord, where stores 

 of natural history have been collected. Here young 

 Nordenskjold was brought up, and while yet a boy was 

 an industrious collector of minerals and insects, and was 

 permitted to accompany his father on his tours, acquiring 

 thus early the keen eye of the mineralogist. After attend- 

 ing the Gymnasium of Bergo for some time — 



" iVordenskjold entered the University of Helsingfors 

 in 1849, devotinghimself chiefly to the study of chemistry, 

 natural historj', mathematics, physics, and above all, of 

 mineralogy and geology. 'Already before I became a 

 student,' he writes, ' I had been allowed to accompany 

 my father in mineralogical excursions, and had acquired 

 from him skill in recognising and collecting minerals and 

 in the use of the blowpipe, which he, being a pupil of 

 Gahn and Berzelius, handled with a masterly skill un- 

 known to most of the chemists of the present day. I 

 now undertook the charge of the rich mineral collection 

 at Frugord, and besides, during the vacations, made 

 excursions to Pitkeranta, Tammela, Pargas, and others of 

 Finland's interesting mineral localities. By practice i 

 thus acquired a keen and certain eye for recognising 

 minerals, which has been of 'great service to me in the 

 path of life I afterwards followed.' 



"After passing his candidate examination in 1853, 

 Nordenskjold accompanied his father on a mineralogical 

 tour to Ural, devoting most of his attention to Demidoff's 

 iron and copper mines at Tajilsk. Here he planned an 

 extensive journey through Siberia, but the breaking out of 

 the Crimean war put a stop to it. 



'"After my return,' says Nordenskjold, ' 1 continued to 

 prosecute my chemical and mineralogical studies with 

 zeal, and wrote as my dissertation for the degree of 

 Licentiate a paper "On the Crystalline Forms of Graphite 

 and Chondrodite," which was discussed under the presi- 

 dency of Prof. Arppe on February 28, 1855. The fol- 

 lowing su:nmer I was employed on a work of somewhat 

 greater extent— "A Description of the Minerals found in 

 Finland," which was published the same autumn. Various 

 short papers in mineralogy and molecular chemistry were 

 printed in "Acta Societatis scientiarum Fennia; ; " I also 

 published, along with Dr. E. Nylander, " The Mollusca 

 of Finland" (Helsingfors, 1856), as an answer to a prize 

 question proposed by one of the faculty. In the interval 

 I had been appointed Curator of the Mathematico- 

 physical Faculty, and had obtained a post at the Mining 

 Offi;e as mining engineer extraordinary, with inconsider- 

 able pay, and an express understanding that no service 

 would be required from me in return. A salary was also 

 attached to my curatorship.' " 



Nordenskjold did not, however, long enjoy these, his 

 first paid appointments. Finland has never taken kindly 

 to her severance from Sweden and her attachment as a 

 province to Russia. Nordenskjold naturally had a great 

 love for Sweden, and on one or two occasions gave ex- 

 pression to his feelings in speeches at social gatherings. 

 These expressions were certainly not significant of any- 

 thing like disloyalty to Russia, but the shortsighted 



governor of the time magnified them into something like 

 high treason. The result was that Nordenskjold left 

 Finland in 1857 and took up his residence in Stockholm ; 

 since then he has been to all intents and purposes a sub- 

 ject of the Swedish Government, and has risen in his 

 adopted country to high honours. Shortly after his arrival 

 he was appointed assistant to the celebrated mineralogist, 

 Mosander, and in December, 1858, on the death of the 

 latter, succeeded him as Professor and Intendant of the 

 Mineralogical Department at the Riks-Museum of Copen- 

 hagen. Before this he had travelled and studied in 

 various parts of Europe, especially in Berlin, had visited 

 the Ural Mountains, and explored part of Finland. Since 

 then he has more thoroughly explored Finland and visited 

 many parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as a mine- 

 ralogist. We need not remind our readers of the great 

 amount of work done by Nordenskjold, during the past 

 twenty years in mineralogical investigation ; his researches 

 in this department have entitled him to take a high rank 

 in his own department. 



As a scientific explorer, Nordenskjold is mainly known 

 in connection with the work he has done in the five expe- 

 ditions to Spitzbergen, of which he has been a member. 

 These expeditions, it should be remembered, were not 

 undertaken for the mere purpose of creating a sensation 

 by the foolhardy feat of attempting to reach the pole at 

 all hazards. Geographical discovery certainly formed a 

 part of the programme of all the expeditions in which 

 Nordenskjold has been engaged, and on these occasions 

 it was attempted to push as far north as was consistent 

 with safety. In the expedition of 1868, for example, the 

 So/ia succeeded in sailing to 81^42' N. in 17" 30' E. long., 

 12' beyond Scoresby's farthest ; and in the spring of 1873 

 an attempt was made in man-drawn sledges (thirty-nine 

 of the forty reindeer had bolted, and were never seen 

 again) to push beyond the Seven Islands, but the con- 

 dition of the ice was such that Nordenskjold prudently 

 abstained from risking his men's lives. The vessels in 

 which the various expeditions have sailed have been of 

 very small tonnage, in one case only 261, but this 

 Nordenskjold considered an advantage in pushing through 

 the drift-ice. The expenses of the expedition have 

 ahvays been moderate, partly defrayed by Government, 

 but mostly by private subscription ; as our readers know, 

 one of the most liberal supporters of Nor lenskjold's 

 exploring undertakings has been Mr. Oscar Dickson, the 

 wealthy Gothenburg merchant, to whom Mr. Leslie's 

 volume is appropriately dedicated. The results obtained 

 in these modest and inexpensive expeditions contrast 

 strongly with those of the expensive and elaborately 

 equipped expedition in the Alert and Discovery. Onall 

 these expeditions Nordenskjold has been accompanied by 

 a competent scientific staff, and the results obtained, both 

 in the natural history and the physics of the Arctic region, 

 have been of the first importance. By means of these 

 and other researches the Riks-Museum of Stockholm has 

 now, probably, the richest collection in mineralogy in the 

 world. 



On the first two expeditions to Spitzbergen, in which 

 Nordenskjold was engaged, 1858 and i86r, he acted as 

 geologist under the leader Otto Torrell, the head of the 

 Swedish Geological Survey. On the former of these 

 several parts of the west coast were visited and explored. 

 At Bell Sound, on the south-west of the main island 

 " dredging was undertaken with abundant success, birds 

 and mammalia were shot and prepared, a tertiary forma- 

 tion containing fossil plants discovered, and botanical 

 collections made, particularly of mosses and lichens. 

 " On July 6 they left this anchorage to sail northwards, 

 but calms and head-winds comp)elled them to seek the 

 north harbour in the same fjord. There Nordenskjold 

 discovered thick vertical strata of limestone and siliceous 

 slates rich in fossils of the genera Productus and Spirifer, 

 and which therefore appeared to belong to the carboni- 



