GESNER 29 



ancient languages as well as in medicine and natural 

 history. Like all the German and Swiss botanists of 

 his generation, he was a stout Protestant. His own 

 father fell in battle, fighting with Zwingli to defend 

 Zurich against the Catholics of the forest cantons. 

 Conrad Gesner too perished in the service of Zurich. 

 In 1564 the city was ravaged by a plague, which 

 Gesner, who was the public physician, combated suc- 

 cessfully, though to the injury of his health. Next year 

 the plague reappeared, and Gesner as before stuck 

 manfully to his post. This time he did not escape, 

 but was carried off before he had quite reached the age 

 of fifty. 



Gesner was the most learned naturalist of the six- 

 teenth century, but he was much more than a naturalist. 

 He had been professor of Greek at Lausanne, and good 

 judges have reckoned him among the best Greek scholars 

 of his age. His Bihlioiheca Universalis, a bibliogra- 

 phical account of all writers in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, 

 his PandectCB Universales, a methodical index to all the 

 knowledge recorded in books, and his Mitliridates, an 

 attempt to arrange all the languages of the world 

 according to their affinities, are works of vast extent 

 and labour. He only lived to produce one comprehen- 

 sive biological work, his History of Animals, and that 

 was not quite complete. For a great History of Plants, 

 which he was much better qualified to write, he had 

 made preliminary studies of high promise. 



Among the many proofs of his multifarious know- 

 ledge we may cite his little book on fossils,^ where he 

 discourses upon all things which are dug out of the 

 earth, and figures not only basaltic columns, encrinites, 



^ De rerun fossilium, lapidum et gemmarum figuris et siniilitudinibus Liber. 

 8vo. Tiguri. 1565. 



