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A. Gray—Memorial of Oswald Heer. 67 
the young immigrant on his arrival wandered solitary and dis- 
heartened. Since then the name of Engelmann has, by his 
own researches and authorship, become unalterably associated 
with the Buffalo-grass of the plains, the noblest Conifers of the 
ocky: Mountains, the most stately Cactus in the world and 
with most of the associated species, as well as with many other 
plants of which perhaps only the annals of botany may take 
account. It has been well said by a congenial biographer, that. 
‘the Western plains will still be bright with the yellow rays of 
Engelmannia, and that the splendid Spruce, the fairest of them 
all, which bears the name of Engelmann, will still, it is to be 
hoped, cover with noble forests the highest slopes of the Rocky 
Mountains, recalling to men, as long as the study of trees oceu- 
pies their thoughts, the memory of a pure, upright, and labo- 
rious life.” 
II. Oswatp Heer. 
OswaLp Heer, the most eminent investigator of the fossil 
plants and insects of the Tertiary period, died on the 27th of 
September last, shortly after he had entered upon the seventy- 
fifth year of his age. 
He was born at the hamlet of Nieder-Utzwy]l, in Canton St. 
Gallen, Switzerland, August 31, 1809, passed most of his youth 
at Matt, in Canton Glarus, where his father was the parish cler- 
gyman, pursued his academic and professional studies at the 
University of Halle, and was ordained as minister of the Gospel 
in the year 1831. The next year he went to Zurich, where he 
resided for the rest of his life. Here he studied medicine for a 
time, but soon devoted himself seriously to entomology and 
botany, of which he was fond from boyhood. In 1834 he 
ecame Privat-docent of these sciences; in 1852, when the » 
University of Zurich was developed, he became its Professor of 
Otany, and in 1855 he took a similar chair in the Polytechni- 
cum. ost of his earlier publications were entomological ; 
of observation, induced him to undertake the study of the’ 
fossil insects of the celebrated Tertiary deposits of Oeningen. 
The results of his labors in this virgin field were published 
between the years 1847 and 1853. His attention had from the 
first been attracted to the plants associated with the insect — 
remains. His first paleo-botanical paper appeared in 1851; 
the three volumes of his Flora Tertiaria Helvetie were issued 
ree 
between 1855 and 1859; in 1862 his memoir on the fossil fl 
of Bovey-Tracey (England) was published in the Philosophical 
Transactions of the Royal Society, London. About the same 
PSUR te 55 
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