288 Obituary. 



chiefly with, tlie arcliEeologist, and this is to be determined by their 

 types, the presence of other industrial products, or the circumstances 

 under which they are found, though occasionally the associated 

 animal-remains give some clue to their antiquity. In the next more 

 ancient, or Cave-period, an age prior to the construction of habi- 

 tations for the living, or of receptacles for the dead, and in which 

 the traces of other and more advanced industries are but rare, the 

 task of indicating their antiquity falls mainly on the palaeontologist, 

 and the fauna (sometimes of animals extinct locally prior to either 

 history or tradition, but whose remains are found in indubitable as- 

 sociation with those works of man) is his only certain guide — the 

 more so, as sometimes the types of the implements found on the 

 same spot take a wide range, from those until lately supposed pe- 

 culiar to the Drift, and down to those hitherto assigned to the earlier 

 part of the Surface-period. In the earliest period, that of the Drift, 

 the archEeologist finds not the slightest trace of other human industry 

 to guide him ; and the work of the palgeontologist is less determi- 

 nate ; it rests with the geologist, by indicating the changes which 

 have occurred in the very land itself, to shadow out the period in 

 the dim distance of that far antiquity when these implements, the 

 undoubted work of human hands, were used and left there by pri- 

 meval man. — Beliquice Aqidtanicce, Part H. 



Dr. Nils Nokdenskiold. — We have to record the death of this 

 eminent mineralogist and geologist at Frugard, near Helsingfors, 

 Finland, on the 21st February, in his 73rd year. Dr. Nordenskiold 

 was a pupil of Berzelius, and from an early age devoted himself to 

 the study of mineralogy. After having made several scientific visits 

 to foreig-n countries, he was, in 1824, appointed by the Emperor of 

 Eussia chief director of the mines of Finland, in which office he 

 continued until 1855. In recognition of his scientific merits, he was 

 elected a fellow, of several foreig-n societies, amongst others the 

 Geological and Geographical Societies of London. One of liis last 

 and most important labours is a map of Finland, showing the 

 direction of the flutes and grooves made by the ice on the surface of 

 the rocks. It is accompanied by a memoir " Beitrag zur Kentniss 

 der Schrammenin Finland," Helsingfors, 1863. (See Sir Eoderick I. 

 Murchison's Anniversary Address to the Geographical Society, 1864, 

 p. 236). His labours as a mineralogist in Finland are noticed in a 

 paper " On the Eocks and Minerals of Finland," by the late Mr. G. 

 E. Eoberts, F.G.S. (see Geological Magazine, Vol. II., p. 534). 

 One of his surviving sons is Professor Adolf Nordenskiold of Stock- 

 holm, the ardent explorer of Spitzbergen and its geology. — G.L. 



Dk. G. T. Gaxjmn, op Lausanne. — Intelligence of the death of 

 this eminent Swiss geologist has just reached us. He was well- 

 known as the author of many original papers, principally relating to 

 the fossil plants of Italy. In 1863 he was elected a foreign cor- 

 respondent of the Geological Society of London. 



