ATHERSTONE, WILLIAM GUYBON British geologist, one of the pioneers in South African geology, was born in 1813 in the district of Uitenhage, Cape Colony, and died at Grahamstown, June 26, 1898. He devoted the leisure of a long and successful medical practice to the pursuit of geological science. Atherstone's identification as a diamond of a crystal found at De Kalk, near the junction of the Riet and Vaal rivers (1867), led indirectly to the establishment of the great diamond industry of South Africa. He encouraged the workings at Jagers f ontein, and he also called attention to the diamantiferous neck at Kimberley. He was one of the founders of the Geological Society of South Africa at Johannesburg in 1895 ; and was for some years a member of the Cape Parliament.
See the obituary by T. Rupert Jones, Natural Science, vol. xiv. (Jan. 1899).