GESNER, CONRAD, a celebrated physician and naturalist, was born at Zurich in 1516. Having finished his studies in France, he travelled into Italy, and taught medicine and philosophy in his own country with extraordinary reputation. He was acquainted with the languages; and excelled so much in natural history, that he was surnamed the Pliny of Germany. He died in 1564, leaving many works behind him; the principal of which are, 1. A history of animals, plants, and fossils; 2. Bibliotheca Universalis. A Greek and Latin lexicon. This author is by Boerhaave emphatically styled Monstrum Eruditionis, "a prodigy of learning." Those indeed (as Mr Coxe observes in his Letters on Switzerland) "who are conversant with the works of this great scholar and naturalist, cannot repress their wonder and admiration at the amplitude of his knowledge in every species of erudition, and the variety of his discoveries in natural history, which was his peculiar delight. Their wonder and admiration is still further augmented, when they consider the gross ignorance of the age which he helped to enlighten, and the scanty succours he possessed to aid him in thus extending the bounds of knowledge; that he composed his works, and made those discoveries which would have done honour to the most enlightened period, under the complicated evils of poverty, sickness, and domestic uneasiness."