576 Obituary—Dr. Oswald Heer. 
one whose place it will be hard to fill. He possessed a power almost 
of divination which led him from the first sight of fragments of a 
leaf to assign genus and species to it, and his determination in 
hundreds of cases was confirmed by the subsequent discovery of 
flowers and fruit. We may say that our knowledge of the Arctic 
Secondary and Tertiary Floras is entirely due to Heer’s labours, and 
Heer’s leaf-determinations. 
He was born near acelebrated fossil locality in the Canton Glarus, 
well known for the remarkable Fossil Fishes which are met with in 
its Eocene slate-quarries. His father, a Lutheran pastor, who had 
been a schoolmaster, tried to keep the boy at Latin and Greek ; but 
he spent all his spare time in collecting all the insects and plants 
within his reach. He bribed his schoolfellows to add to his collec- 
tions, by giving them singing lessons on Sundays. He was once 
lent a book on Natural History, the whole of which he copied out! 
From the splendid collections made by young Heer in these and 
later years in the Miocene Tertiary deposits of Oeningen, near Lake © 
Constance, and sent chiefly to his father’s friend, Prof. van Breda at 
Harlem, in Holland, he maintained himself and paid his University 
fees. 
In 1828 he entered the University of Halle, where he was to study 
theology ; but he associated mainly with naturalists, among whom 
were Junghuhn, also Burmeister of Buenos Ayres, the last of whom 
alone survives him. When he left the University in 1832, he was 
ordained, and he had to choose between accepting the post of pastor 
at Schwanclen and that of Curator of the Entomological Collection 
of Escher and Zollikofer in Ziirich. He chose the latter, and at 
Ziirich he worked for half a century. He speedily became connected 
with the University, and was Professor of Botany to the well-known 
“ Polytechnicum” from its first establishment in 1855. Here his 
lectures were delivered regularly, and were not even suspended when 
he was confined to his bed. Some idea of his marvellous energy 
can be formed from the fact that the Royal Society’s Catalogue 
assigns 95 titles of separate papers to him up to 1874. His first 
papers were on Entomology, and his first great work was ‘On the 
Fossil Insects of Oeningen and of Radoboj in Croatia.” He soon 
however took to Paleophytology, and his name will best be known 
by his books on this subject, namely :— 
1. ‘*‘ Flora Tertiaria Helvetize ’’ (1855—59), 8 vols. and 156 plates. 
2. “Die Urwelt der Schweiz,’’ 1865, and Second Edition, 1879. French 
Translation by Gaudin 1857. “ Primeval World of Switzerland’’ (English 
translation), 1876. 
3. “Flora Fossilis Arctica,’’ 1868—83, 7 vols. and 398 plates. 
4. “ Flora Fossilis Helvetica,’’ 1876, 1 vol. 70 plates. 
When we consider that for the greater part of the last ten years 
Heer worked in his bed or on his sofa, the list we have given of his 
publications seems simply marvellous. He leaves to all his friends 
the memory of one of the most instructive of companions and the 
most genial of men.—HK.H.S. 
