00 Obituary Notice. 



herbarhim student ot living furnis, of a distinctly poetic 

 temperamoLt, which showed itself on more than one 

 occasion in verse, and was no doubt heightened by his con- 

 sumptive tendencj'. 



Sir Charles Lyell {Life and Correspondence, vol. ii. 246, 

 August 1859), \vrites to Leonard Horner — 



" I perceive that Heer is trymg to frame a progressive theory for 

 plants, though he is a good deal put about by finding a Pala-oxysis 

 in the coal, one of the BromeUacea?. In fact, the monocotyledons do 

 not seem as yet to keep their place in the chronological system, as 

 they should do if they knew their real rank in the order of develop- 

 ment. Some of them appear before their time. Tt is, however, 

 striking to observe that the tendency of geological facts (or opinions) 

 caiTics a man who is working in a new field, and an independent 

 thinker into the speculation that nature began with cellular, and 

 went on to vascular cryptogams, from Hchens and seaweeds to ferns, 

 and .slowly got up to conifene and cycads, then to different 

 divisions of dicotyledonous, apetalous, polypetalous, and gamo- 

 petalous in the order of their perfection. Although Heer is too 

 well aware of the exceptions to his rules, and even of the impossi- 

 bility of classifying the dicotyledons correctly according to relation, 

 dignity, or perfection, j^et the attempt shows how seductive such a 

 generahsation is. So long as it is admitted that man came last, and 

 the idea of progress is cherished as the only way of uniting that 

 fact with pakeontological data, I suppose these views will find 

 favour. It seems the only prospect of a complete system of 

 uniting aU. into one grand whole, the supposed absence of fish in 

 the oldest rocks, with the coming in of the mammaha last of all, 

 and with a parallel series of progressive steps from the algae to the 

 lilies and the roses. But it might be better if we were rather less 

 ambitious. This eager desire to solve the whole problem may 

 mislead zoologically, botanically, and geologically. I suppose mnet 

 men prefer a doubtful system which enables them to group together 

 a gi-eat many facts, than to have none. I spent three days in 

 Heer s collection. He is continually finding fruits which boar 

 out the generic determinations previously obtained from leaves 

 alone." 



Heer's Primeval World in Siviizerland, which has ap- 

 peared in English dress, is his only large publication on 

 general geology. Its poetic descriptions of a lost fauna 

 and flora in some instances break out into verse. Heer's 

 other books arc classificatory memoirs, A general review 

 of them would be mostly a critique in special on recent 

 additions to Arctic fossil botanv. The thorough working 



