part 1] AisnsrivERSARY addeess of the president. Ixv 



Alfred G-aeriel Nathorst was for many jears Director of 

 the Palaeobotanical Museum of the Swedish Acadeiny, one of the 

 very few institutions in the world devoted to the stud^^ and exhibi- 

 tion, of fossil plants. Shortly before his retirement Dr. Nathorst 

 had the satisfaction of seeing the completion of the new building, 

 an event to which he had long looked forward with great eagerness, 

 and the appointment as Director of his old pu])il and assistant, 

 Dr. Halle. The Stockholm Museum was the Mecca of paljro- 

 botanists, and those who were fortunate enough to make the 

 pilgrimage returned with feelings of admiration and envy. 



ISIathorst was a good geologist and systematic botanist, an 

 experienced Arctic explorer and geographer, pre-eminent in his 

 exceptionallj^ wide knowledge of palaeobotany. There are few 

 men who have left behind them a worthier monument of scientific 

 achievement in the coarse of a life consistently and whole-heartedly 

 devoted to research. He took a leading part in building up palaso- 

 botanical science, not onh^ by his own investigations, but by the 

 sympathetic and ungrudging help that he was always ready to 

 give to younger men. In a letter of acknowledgment of the 

 .award of the Lyell Medal he spoke of his first visit to England at 

 the age of twenty-one, when he first met Sir Charles Lyell, as 'one 

 of the most highly -prized reminiscences ' of his youth. 'It was 

 Lyell's "Principles of Geology," ' he wrote, 'which first excited my 

 love for Geology.' Since 1S72 he had paid many visits to this 

 country. In 1907, as one of the more distinguished Foreign 

 Delegates at the Centenary Celebration of our Society,. he i-eceived 

 at Cambridge the Honorary degree of Sc.D. He was an ideal 

 guest : thoroughly at home in a land for which he had a real 

 affection ; despite his inability to hear the spoken word, by his 

 quickness in reading the deaf-and-dumb alphabet or grasping the 

 meaning of partl3^-written sentences, he almost made one forget 

 his infirmit}^ He spoke and wrote English with wonderful correct- 

 ness, and was familiar with certain favourite English authors, 

 notably Dickens and Kipling. 



Nathorst's scientific activity was amazing. His first paper 

 w^as published in 1869, and his last contribution, ' On the Culm 

 Flora of Spitsbergen,' appeared in 1920. In 1882 he w^ent to 

 Spitsbergen, and in 1898 he conducted an exjDcdition to Bear 

 Island and other Arctic lands and circumnavigated Spitsbergen. 

 In a two- volume book published in 1900, he described his 

 Arctic experiences during two summers in jS^orthern ice-seas. 



VOL. LXXVII. C 



