448 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



land) 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 

 fossil 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 published a 

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

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

 Madeira, and the Canaries. In this, and in his work, pub- 

 lished in 1860, 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 

 palaeontology, his " Urwelt der Schweiz," — a vivid portrai- 

 ture of the past of his native country, — appeared in 1865, 

 and afterwards in a revised French edition, with his friend 

 Gaudin (who 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 Fossilis Helvetiae," a 

 square-folio volume, with seventy plates, which extended and 

 supplemented his Tertiary Flora of that country, being de- 

 voted to the illustration of the fossil plants of the Carbon- 

 iferous, the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous, as well 

 as the Eocene formations. 



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

 ing any extensive explorations in person. But materials for 

 his investigation came to him in even embarrassing abun- 

 dance, not only from his own country, — where, even before 

 he was widely known (as his fellow-countryman and his dis- 

 tinguished fellow-worker in palaeo-botany, Lesquereux, informs 

 us), a lady opened upon her property near Lausanne quarries 

 and tunnels expressly for the discovery and collection of fossil 

 plants, and sent them by tons to Zurich, — but from all parts 

 of the world collections were pressed upon him, and his whole 

 time and strength were given to their study. In this way he 



