SKETCH OF OSWALD HEER. 547 



floras through the past, the variations of climate, the movements of the 

 crust of the earth, all these subjects, recently hidden, now just brought 

 to light, alike depend on the persevering labors of Oswald Heer, and 

 derive from his researches at least partial elements for their solution." 

 " Nature " remarked, in noticing his death, that " however the study 

 of fossil plants may rank in the time to come, Heer's name will forever 

 be bound up with it as its great pioneer." And Dr. Asa Gray said, on 

 a similar occasion, that his works " make an era in vegetable paleon- 

 tology. Their crowning general interest is, that they bring the vege- 

 tation of the past into direct connection with the present." 



Oswald Heer was born at Niederutzwyl, in the Canton of St. 

 Gall, Switzerland, August 1, 1809, and died in Lausanne, September 

 27, 1883. His father was a clergyman, originally of the Canton Glarus, 

 and came of a family that enjoyed an honorable distinction in Swiss 

 history. Of the three branches of the family tracing their descent 

 from a common ancestor, Councilor Abraham Heer, born in 1580, one 

 was extinguished in the male line in the fifth generation ; the sec- 

 ond, after having produced a number of honored statesmen, came to a 

 similar end with the death of Federal Councilor and President of the 

 Federation, Dr. Joachim Heer. The third branch, whose sons through 

 five generations have nearly all been clergymen, is the one to which 

 the subject of this sketch belonged, and it still lives in several families. 



Oswald Heer was an infant of good physical promise ; but before 

 he was a year old he was brought nearly to the grave by scarlet fever, 

 and never recovered from the effects of the attack. He was made 

 weak for the rest of his life, for many years an invalid ; but, having 

 inherited a strong constitution, he was nevertheless capable of endur- 

 ing extraordinary fatigue with great ease. In 1811 Pastor Heer was 

 called to be director of a newly founded high-school for boys at Glarus, 

 where he was guaranteed a position for three years, and eventually re- 

 mained five years. Thence, in January, 1817, he removed to Matt, in 

 the Kleinthal, where Oswald spent his boyhood. In that deep recess 

 of the mountains, whose only communication with the world at the 

 time was by an arduous bridle-path, the good pastor performed the 

 part of a general dispenser of beneficences. He urged the construction 

 of better roads ; there being no doctor at the place, he learned to take 

 care of those who were brought to him with frozen limbs or hurt bv 

 avalanches ; he introduced inoculation for the small-pox ; he taught 

 the workmen in the slate-quarries lessons of temperance and thrift, to 

 save their earnings rather than spend them in the beer-shops where 

 they were paid to them ; and he labored hard and with success to sup- 

 ply his people with improved schools. 



The tendencies of young Heer's mind began to assert themselves 

 in the earlier stages of his education, which was conducted under the 

 supervision of his father. He kept an exercise-book, in which he re- 

 produced a number of moral and religious stories. Among these sto- 



