86 Ohituary Notice. 



flowering well this summer iu Mr MuirlieaJ's bog garden near 

 Berwick. Anemone baldensis, a dwarf plant with rather a run- 

 ning habit and easily grown, has large white flowers about the 

 size of a two-shilling piece, but is not very free in flowering. 

 Ranunculus glacialis also requires bog garden treatment ; it is a 

 beautiful plant about 8 or 9 inches high, with flowers white on 

 the upper surface, but purple on the under side of the petals. 

 Pyrola unijiora, to be found in a fir wood at Comayena near the 

 base of Mont Blanc, is a plant I have never seen in a thriving 

 state in cultivation. Some people fancy it is a parasite, but I 

 am not inclined to think so, and if the proper means were taken 

 it might be grown as readily as any other Pyrola. The variety 

 of Androsace carnea found iu Switzerland has much paler flowers 

 than the one in the Pyrenees, and is a more difficult plant to 

 grow. I liave several times had plants sent to me, but have always 

 after a year failed to succeed with them, whereas the fine rich 

 pink-flowered variety from the Pyrenees thrives with me luxuriantly. 



Ohituary Notice of the late Professor Osiuald Hecr. By 

 Andrew Taylor. 



(Read lOtli January 1884.) 



Ill October 1883 the Society was called to join in 

 mourning the deatli of Dr Oswald IIeer, the great palseo- 

 phytologist, lleer was born at Glarus, Switzerland, in 1809, 

 and died on 27tli September last at Lausanne, aged 74, 

 Elected one of our Foreign Honorary Fellows in 1874: he had 

 been a Foreign Corresponding Fellow since our foundation. 



Tlie Swiss Alps, with their variety of living nature, as 

 well as their marvellous stone tablets of past life, inspire 

 boy naturalists with an imique zeal and enthusiasm, re- 

 sulting, in more than one instance during the last half 

 century, in their becoming leaders in the van of natural 

 science. Ileer's collecting of plants and insects began as 

 a boy. At school be bribed his mates by singing-lessons 

 to add to his finds. Designed for the Church — his 

 father was a Lutheran pastor — he entered the University 

 of Halle in 1828. But so accurate had his knowledge of 

 genera and species, principally of the fossil fishes, insects, 

 and plants of the Tertiary deposits of (Eningen become, 

 that he mainly supported himself •\\ the university by 



