OSWALD HEER. 557 



earlier publications were entomological ; and it was by the way of ento- 

 mology tliat he entered upon liis distinguished career as a paleontologist. 

 His life-long friend, the eminent Escher von der Liath, appreciating his 

 rare powers of observation, induced him to undertake the study of 

 the fossil insects of the celebrated tertiary deposits of Oeningen. The 

 results of his labors in this virgin field were published between the 

 years 1847 and 1853. His attention had from the first been attracted 

 to the plants associated with the insect remains. His first paleo- 

 botanical paper appeared in 1851 ; the three volumes of his Flora 

 Tertiaria Hdoetice. were issued between 1855 and 1859; in 1862 his 

 memoir on the fossil flora of Bovey-Tracey (England) was published 

 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London. 

 About the same time also appeared a paper in the Journal of the 

 Geological Society on certain fos.^il plants of the Isle of Wight. 

 For the benefit of his health, always delicate and then much impaired, 

 he passed the winter of 1854-55 in Madeira, and on his return pub- 

 lished a paper on the fossil plants of that island, and an article on tlie 

 probable origin of the actual flora and fauna of the Azores, Madeira, 

 and the Canaries. In this, and in his work, published in 18G0, on, 

 Tertiary Climates in their Relation to Vegetation (which the next 

 year appeared also in a French translation by his young friend 

 Gaudin), Heer brought out his theory of a Miocene Atlantis. His 

 more extensive and popular treatise upon past climates as illustrated 

 by vegetable paleontology, his Urwelt der Schweiz, — a vivid por- 

 traiture of the past of his native country, — appeared in 18G5, and 

 afterwards in a revised French edition, with his friend Gaudin (wlio 

 died soon after) for collaborator as well as translator. There was also 

 an English translation by Hey wood, published in 1876, and, indeed, it 

 is said to have been translated into six languages. 



In 1877 Heer completed his Flora Fossilts Helvetice, a square- 

 folio volume, with seventy plates, which extended and supplemented 

 his Tertiary Flora of that country, being devoted to the illustration of 

 the fossil plants of the Carboniferous, the Triassic, the Jurassic, and 

 the Cretaceous, as well as the Eocene formations. 



The life-long delicacy of Heer's health prevented his making any 

 extensive explorations in person. But materials for his investigation 

 came to him in even embarrassing abundance, not only from his own 

 country, — where, even before he was widely known, (as his fellow 

 countryman and his distinguished fellow worker in paleobotany, Les- 

 quereux, informs us,)' a lady opened upon her property near Lausanne 

 quarries and tunnels expressly for the discovery and collection of fossil 



