Though comparatively few even of his own country 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 Umeå.1 This man was born in 1635 or thereabouts, and called himself subsequently PETRUS MARTINI ARCTÆDIUS. He appears to have decided to strike out a new line, for we find him resorting to the University at Åbo, in Finland, where he matriculated in 1656. Seven years later, on April 3 1663, he was appointed a master at the Piteå Grammar School by the Consistory of the Norrland Diocese, located at Hernösand. He proceeded at 1 The town of Umeå is situated near the mouth of the River Ume, which flows out into the Gulf of Bothnia. Piteå is similarly situated, about 120 miles further north; Hernösand also lies close to the Baltic Sea, about the same distance SSW. of Umeå. once to take up his teaching duties at Piteå, but took priest's orders in September of the same year and was presented to the perpetual curacy in his native parish in 1666; there he remained till 1690, when he was promoted to the living of Nordmaling.1 This P. M. ARCTÆDIUS married a certain ANNA GRUBB, who bore him five children, two of them sons, OLAUS and MARTEN. The former of these two sons, whose date of birth was probably 1670, studied like his father at Åbo University, where he matriculated in 1692. Four years later he was ordained at Hernösand and in 1701 he obtained the perpetual curacy of Anundsjö. In that year he lost his first wife, DOROTHEA DJUPEDIA. Not long afterwards he married again, his second wife being HELENA SIDENIA, a daughter of PETRUS SIDENIUS, of Stockholm, a Master of Philosophy and a Court Chaplain. There were five children of this marriage, of whom PETER, the future scientist, was the oldest but one. The date of his birth, according to the Anundsjö Parish Register, was February 27 (O. S.) or March 10 (N. S.). The family continued to reside at Anundsjö for upwards of ten years, but in 1716 a document was addressed to the Crown by the Consistory at Hernösand, stating that, whereas the incumbent of the living of Nordmaling, PETRUS MARTINI ARCTÆDIUS to wit, was of advanced age, had been blind for over two years, and was in great bodily distress, they, the Consistory, sought leave to approve an application made by the said incumbent, praying that his son OLAUS might be empowered to succeed him in the discharge of his duties, which application had, moreover, received the unanimous support of the congregation of the parish. In reply thereto an authorisation conferring the father's living on the son, was signed by King Charles XII in Lund on the 26th of September 1716. 1 A small place on the coast, about 50 miles SW. of Umeå. 2 Anundsjö lies about as far (50 miles) from Nordmaling as that place is off Umeå; it is inland, being almost due W. of Nordmaling. This change of domicile was not without a distinct bearing upon the career of OLAUS ARCTEDIUS' son PETER, for the natural features and climatic conditions of the two localities are widely different; thus, the new home would undoubtedly offer, to a lad already alive to the interests of the open-air-world, far more incentives than the old one to pursue an inborn bent for the study of nature. Now in very early life PETER had declared himself a devotee of zoology in general and of fishes in particular; it is, therefore, easy to understand that his father's removal to the shores of the Bothnian Gulf must have been particularly welcome to him, for there he had its waters ready to hand, from which to procure an unfailing supply of specimens and materials for study and investigation. As the climate of Nordmaling, moreover, considering its high latitude, is remarkably kindly, there would be, on that score too, greater opportunities afforded the lad than before of studying nature in her various aspects and of watching the ways and life of animals, birds and fishes in their several natural surroundings. In the autumn of 1716 PETER was sent to school at Hernösand. Among his schoolfellows he quickly made his mark by reason of the habit he had of devoting out-of-school hours to the dissecting of fishes and the collection of plants rather than to sharing in the ordinary boyish amusements. In class he kept well abreast of his companions, without distinguishing himself by any special brilliance; so soon, however, as he had acquired the rudiments of Latin, he put his knowledge to practical use by greedily devouring the writings of the medieval alchemists. After successfully passing through the lower school, he was promoted to the Gymnasium, or upper school, at Hernösand, and in due course proceeded thence to the university, furnished with the highest certificate awarded. The university to which he directed his steps was not that of Åbo; for during the troublous times through which the North of Europe had passed in the reign of Charles XII, that university had been obliged to close its portals, and though by this time reopened and reconstituted, it had not attained to anything like its former status. Consequently it was in Upsala that PETER inscribed his name as a matriculated student, on October 30 1724. As a matter of fact the actual signature in the university register is by another hand, doubtless that of the Dean of the Faculty for the time being; the entry "Petrus Arctelius Angerm."", thus showing a slight scribal error. In another register, that in which the newly arrived undergraduates inscribed their names and the amounts subscribed to the library funds, we find in PETER'S own hand-writing: runs: Betnus Arctidius Angermannies with the amount paid in: - 4 dalers 16 öre. This signature shows that up to that time he retained the family name in the same spelling as that adopted by his grandfather; it was not till some years subsequently that he assumed the variant by which he is known to fame. It was originally intended that he should devote himself to the study of theology at the university, that he might in due time follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and perhaps even succeed to the living of Nordmaling. His own pronounced bent, however, in another direction forbade him to adopt that course in obedience to his father's natural desires on his behalf; the keen interest he had felt in natural history as quite a boy, and the taste he had imbibed 1 Angerm[annus] denotes: "From the District of Ångermanland". Undergraduates at Upsala (and Lund) are classed in "Nations”, according to the parts of the country from which they come. The joining of a Nation is an obligatory preliminary to matriculation. Each Nation has a club-house of its own, and administers scholarship funds &c. for the benefit of its members. |