Peter Artedi

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Though comparatively few even of his own countrymen of the present day are familiar with the name of Peter Artedi, there are, in fact, not many men on the proud roll of famous Swedish naturalists and scientists who have greater or better claims to be held in honourable remembrance than he, occupying as he...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Though comparatively few even of his own countrymen of the present day are familiar with the name of Peter Artedi, there are, in fact, not many men on the proud roll of famous Swedish naturalists and scientists who have greater or better claims to be held in honourable remembrance than he, occupying as he does a very prominent place among the pioneers of natural science study. By way of commemoration of the 200th anniversary of this illustrious man's birth, it is here proposed to give a sketch of his brief life and also some appreciation of his significance in the history of biological investigation. It appears that Peter Artedi came of a family which was settled in the Government of Vesterbotten in North Sweden. The first member of the family to adopt the name, which in a variant, simplified form his descendant was to make famous, was the son of a peasant farmer residing in the village of Hiske, which is situated in the compass of the rural parish of Umea.1 This man was born in 1635 or thereabouts, and called himself subsequently Petrus Martini Arctdius. He appears to have decided to strike out a new line, for we find him resorting to the University at Abo, in Finland, where he matriculated in 1656. Seven years later, on April 3 1663, he was appointed a master at the Pitea Grammar School by the Consistory of the Norr- land Diocese, located at Hernosand. He proceeded at 1 The town of Umea is situated near the mouth of the River Ume, which flows out into the Gulf of Bothnia. Pitea is similarly situated, about 120 miles further north; Hernosand also lies close to the Baltic Sea, about the same distance SSW. of Umea. once to take up his teaching duties at Pitea, but took priest's orders in September of the same year and was presented to the perpetual curacy in his native...