78 Reviews — Heer’s Pritnceval World of Smtzerland. 
EEVIEWS. 
The Primasval World of Switzerland : with 500 Illustration s. 
By Professor Oswald Heer, of the University of Zürich. Edited 
by James Heywood, M.A., F.B.S. (Translated bj r 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.) 
T HE physical features of Switzerland have long been nearly as 
familiär 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. 1 
Elijab Walton has painted for us the rosy-tinted Matterhorn, the 
pale Mont Blanc, and the blushing J ungfrau kissed by the first rays 
of the rising sun. 
Forbes, Ball, Tyndall, Wills, Whymper, and numerous leading 
members of our Alpine Club bave 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 Zürich. Already well knowm abroad as the 
author of many valuable works on Fossil Botany and Entomology, 2 
he has given us the benefit of bis Services here also in the examination 
and determination of the plant-remains from the series of lignites and 
clays of Bovey Tracey, Devonshire, 3 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 Nordenskiöld 
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 Zürich 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, likethe 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. 
Wethink the same criticism applies to the ‘ Aster ophyllites ’ foliage of 
the Calamites, which would not, we venture to suggest, have bent 
1 See the Alpine Guides by John Ball, F.R.S., late President of the Alpine Club, 
London, Longmans & Co., in 10 parts at 2s. 6d. each, with excellent maps and 
panoramas. 
2 On the Tertiary Flora of Switzerland. On the Vegetation and Climate of the 
Tertiary Period. Onthe Tertiary Insects of (Eningen and Radoboj. 
3 The Lignite Formation of Bovey Tracey, by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., and Dr. 
Oswald Heer, of Zürich, Phil. Trans., 1863. 
