﻿78 Reviews — Heer's Primceval World of Switzerland. 



The Primeval World of Switzerland : with 500 Illustrations. 

 By Professor Oswald Heer, of the University of Zurich. Edited 

 by James Heywood, M.A., F.K.S. (Translated by W. S. Dallas, 

 F.L.S., Assistant Secretary Geol. Soc. Lond.) Illustrated by a 

 coloured Geological Map of Switzerland ; 7 tinted page-size plates 

 of scenery ; and 11 Plates of Fossils. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 716. 

 (London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1876.) 



THE physical features of Switzerland have long been nearly as 

 familiar to a large portion of our countrymen as the hills and 

 valleys of their native land. Each mountain peak, each pass and 

 glacier, has been visited and graphically described.^ 



Elijah Walton has painted for us the rosy-tinted Matterhorn, the 

 pale Mont Blanc, and the blushing Jungfrau kissed by the first rays 

 of the rising sun. 



Forbes, Ball, Tyndall, Wills, Whymper, and numerous leading 

 members of our Alpine Club have scaled its peaks and studied its 

 glaciers, and probably nearly as many papers on the geology of the 

 Swiss Alps have been written by English as by Swiss geologists. 

 Foremost in the ranks of the latter stands the author of the present 

 work. Dr. Oswald Heer, of Zurich. Already well known abroad as the 

 author of many valuable works on Fossil Botany and Entomology,* 

 he has given us the benefit of his services here also in the examination 

 and determination of the plant-remains from the series of lignites and 

 clays of Bovey Tracey, Devonshire,^ and from the Norfolk Forest-. 

 bed ; whilst to him also we are indebted for that wonderful chapter 

 in Fossil Botany revealed by the Plant-beds of Greenland and 

 Spitzbergen, whose treasures have been brought back by Nordenskiold 

 and others, and placed in Dr. Oswald Heer's hands for description. 



Under the title of "Urwelt der Schweiz," the present work ap- 

 peared at Zurich in 1865, and a French edition, in 1872, was 

 published at Basle and Geneva. 



Perhaps the most attractive feature of the work before us is a 

 series of eight tinted plates, giving ideal views of Swiss land and 

 sea in the Carboniferous, Keuper, Lias, Jura, the Miocene, Quatern- 

 ary and Glacial Periods. 



If we ventured to criticize these restorations, we would take excep- 

 tion to the foliage of Lepidodendron in the Carboniferous Period 

 being represented as pendulous, like the Weeping- willow. From an 

 examination of numerous remains from the Coal-measures, we are 

 satisfied that the leaves and cones were borne erect, not depending. 

 We think the same criticism applies to the ' Aster opliyUites ' foliage of 

 the Calamites, which would not, we venture to suggest, have bent 



1 See tlie Alpine Guides by John Ball, F.R.S., late President of the Alpine Club, 

 London, Longmans & Co., in 10 parts at 2s. Qd. each, with excellent maps and 

 panoramas. 



2 On the Tertiary Flora of Switzerland. On the Vegetation and Climate of the 

 Tertiary Period. On the Tertiary Insects of CEningen and Radoboj. 



3 The Lignite Formation of Bovey Tracey, by W. Pengelly, F.E.S., and Dr. 

 Oswald Heer, of Zurich, Phil. Trans., 1863. 



