WILHELM PHILIP SCHIMPER. 183 



second edition appeared in 1876. The persistent labours which 

 resulted in these works could only have been accomplished by an 

 enthusiast ; and the enthusiasm of Schimper may be estimated by 

 the fact that he collected with his own hands the greater proportion 

 of the species figured by him in the neighbourhood of Strasburg, 

 chiefly hi the Black Forest and in the Vosges. As he was busily 

 engaged during the week, and unable to take from his official 

 hours time for these muscological excursions, he was in the habit 

 of starting on Saturday afternoons, when he had finished his week's 

 labours, and walking all night to the locality which he proposed to 

 explore. He carried with him the small supply of food that he 

 required, and the apparatus necessary for collecting. The day- 

 light of Sunday he actively gave to collecting, and when darkness 

 put a stop to his work he set out with his burden of mosses on 

 his back, on his return to Strasburg, arriving in time for the 

 official work of Monday ; and this was not a rare, but, on the con- 

 trary, almost a weekly practice with Schimper. 



AMiile Schimper's fame will always rest mainly on his bryolo- 

 gical works, yet his contributions to Vegetable Paleontology repre- 

 sent by themselves labours that might have occupied a busy life 

 entirely devoted to them. In 1844 he described and figured the 

 Tnassic plants of the Vosges, and in 1862 he followed this up with 

 a similar work on the Devonian Plants of the same region. 



parts and conditions of the Lepidodendron, elaborately 

 described in ■ Le Terrain de Transition des Vosges/ 



Perhaps in these works his keen eye for differences, which had 

 been so serviceable in his bryological investigations, led him to 

 recognise in the fragmentary materials that he had to deal with a 

 greater variety of specific and even generic forms than others would 

 accept — as for instance in the specific value given to different 



figured and 



__ . _ His great 



work was his ' Traite de Paleontologie Vegetale,' consisting of 

 three volumes of text and one of plates, published between 1869 

 and 1874. In this work he has reduced to systematic order all 

 that was known of the fossil plants of the world. It was a her- 

 culean task, and it has been accomplished with a master's hand, 

 -Besides the systematic diagnosis given of each species, the work 

 contains a valuable introduction on the conditions in which fossil 

 Plants are found, the methods of investigation, and the changes 



tliat have taken place in the vegetation of the globe ; and the third 

 jolume closes with a general exhibition of the various fossil floras 

 based on the data that have been presented in the work itself. The 

 Publication of this work has formed an epoch in the intelligent 

 investigate of fossil plants. Schimper was Professor of Geology, 

 JJW Director of the Museum of Natural History of Strasburg. He 



as a member of various learned societies, and both the Linnean 



J K Geological Societies of London had recognised the excellence 



nis labours in the two departments by electing him as a foreign 



hi em,,er - Through the liberality of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts 



- s valuable herbarium of mosses has been secured for the Kew 



erbanui *. He died at Paris on the 20th of March last. 



W. Carruthers. 



