288 [ Nov, 2, 
the Flora tertiaria Helvetica came from that source. One cannot read 
without a deep feeling of admiration a note of thanks written by Heer in 
honor of that lady in the beginning of the third volume of that work. The 
third volume ends the Tertiary Flora of Switzerland. The work was then 
supposed to be complete, but a fourth volume, Mora fossilis Helvetica was 
published in 1876, containing descriptions and figures of plants of the Car- 
boniferous, the Trias, the Jurassic, the Cretaceous and of the Eocene of 
Switzerland. This great work in 4to, with a very large number of splendid 
plates, is too well known to demand description. It has given to the author 
the first place in the ranks of Phytopaleontologists of our time. 
A kind of antecedent résumé of this work was already published in 1865 
under the name of Die Urwelt der Schweite (the Ancient World of Switzer- 
land). It isa large F° volume of 600 pages, splendidly illustrated by figures 
representing fossil remains of plants and animals of the different geological 
periods. The best proof of the worth of the volume is the fact that though 
relating only to the paleontology of the geological formations of Switzer- 
land, the book has had already three or four editions, and been translated 
into six different languages, 
At this time Heer was requested by professors and directors of museums 
to determine and describe numerous collections of fossil plants, and as a 
result of his researches published many separate memoirs on the plants of 
divers localities of Burope. Among the more important ones I may men- 
tion: The Flora of the clays of Borey Tracy, England (1861). The Baltic 
Miocene flora ; the Eocene flora of Bornstaedt (1863 and 1869). The Oreta- 
ceous flora of Moletin ; that of Quedlinburg (1871). The Phyllites creta- 
ciés of Nebraska, the Fossil flora of Alaska, the fossil plants of Vancouver, 
contributions to the fossil flora of Sumatra, and a number of others, half a 
dozen of which are mentioned in the catalogue of Heer’s work by Schim- 
per. 
During this time Heer was already at work on his most important pro- 
duction, the Hlora fossilis Arctica, which, begun in 1862, was finished by 
the publication of the seventh volume a few months before his death. 
Considering only the large number of the publications of Heer, they 
already constitute a weighty monument as the result of the life of a man, 
But that number is not the essential value. Other paleontologists, Brong- 
niart, Sternberg, Unger, Goeppert, Schimper, Lindley and Hutton, among 
the illustrious dead, have left works which may be compared to those of 
Heer, though in a far reduced degree of value. None of them, however, 
has raised fossil botany to a high degree of importance in the scientific 
world. None of them has, like Heer, opened new fields for the exercise 
of the mind, and prepared for vegetable paleontology an honorable place 
in the domain of science enlarged by researches in that specialty. 
In the Arctic Flora Heer has brought to light, for the polar regions of 
treenland, Spitzberg, Sachalin, a subtropical vegetation, attesting, dur- 
ing the Tertiary period for those northern regions, a climate about like 
that of Florida and the Gulf shores at the present time, He has recog- 
