AN OLD NATURALIST CONRAD GESNER. 



55 



Fig. 



Gesner's short life was a struggle with poverty and ill health, 

 but he did not suffer neglect, for there is evidence that his con- 

 temporaries held him in 

 honor and took a just pride 

 in his industry and simple 

 earnestness. 



The magistrates of Zu- 

 rich appointed him chief 

 physician and Professor 

 of Philosophy and Natu- 

 ral History in 1553, and 

 the magistrates of Lu- 

 cerne welcomed him, in 

 1554, with those distin- 

 guished honors which 

 were usually reserved for 

 high public officers. 



The Emperor Ferdinand granted armorial bearings to him and 

 his family, with a statement of his desire to express his apprecia- 

 tion of his work, and to encourage others to follow his example. 



His death was the glorious climax of his earnest, laborious life. 

 When the plague broke out in Zurich in 1564 he devoted his 

 scientific skill and professional experience to the effort to dis- 

 cover some way to check it ; he threw himself into this inquiry 

 with such earnestness that he himself contracted the disease, and, 

 after a short illness, died in his museum, to which he had been 



carried a short time before, 

 at his request. 



He was interred in the 

 cloisters of the great 

 church of Zurich the next 

 day with most distin- 

 guished honors, and a large 

 concourse of people of all 

 ranks followed him to the 

 tomb, amid the mourning 

 of the whole city. 



I have selected as an 

 illustration of Gesner's 

 method of treating his sub- 

 jects the chapter on the 

 marmot ; for here, as in many other places, we find proof of the 

 injustice of the assertion that he was not an original observer, 

 but simply a compiler. 



Fig. 8. 



