Conrad, a celebrated naturalist, surnamed the Pliny of Germany, and, for his time, a prodigy of application, knowledge, and sagacity, was born at Zurich on the 26th March 1516. He was the son of Vasa Gesner, farmer, and Barbara Frick, persons who, besides being poor, had several other children, so that he would not have been able to continue his studies had it not been for the assistance of his maternal uncle John Frick, a minister, who formed his taste for letters, and gave him his first notions in botany. But this uncle having died, and his father having been killed in 1531, at the battle of Zug, where the celebrated reformer Zwinglius also perished, young Gesner found himself obliged to seek his fortune in a foreign country. He accordingly went to Strasburg, where, by means of a salary, he for some time seconded the labours of Capiton; then, having obtained some assistance from the canons of Zurich, he repaired to Bourges, and there commenced the study of medicine. At the age of eighteen, having occasion to visit Paris, he indulged without rule and without restraint his passion for all kinds of study, being assisted in his poverty by John Steiger, a young Bernese of patriarchal family, with whom he was connected by the ties of friendship. From Paris he returned a second time to Strasburg, whence, in 1536, he was recalled to Zurich to occupy in the college of that place the petty employment of regent. But the magistrates having soon perceived that he was formed for less obscure and more important labours, made him, in 1537, a new grant, to enable him to continue his medical studies at Bâle; and it was in this latter city that he began to labour for the public by superintending an edition of the Greek Dictionary of Favorinus. The following year, the senate of Berne having founded an academy at Lausanne, Gesner was appointed to that institution, and taught Greek there for three years. He then passed a year at Montpellier, where he became intimately connected with the celebrated physician Laurent Joubert, and the great naturalist Rondelet. At length, in 1541, he was received as doctor in medicine at Bâle, where he completed some extracts from the Greek and Arabian authors on botany and medicine, which were published the same year at Zurich and the succeeding one at Lyons. Soon afterwards, he published a Catalogue of Plants in four languages, in which he gave proofs of very extensive knowledge in botany, and indicated several vegetables which were then new. Some journeys in the Alps of Switzerland and Savoy enabled him to discover other plants which were also new, and led him, in 1542, to write a little book on milk, accompanied by a letter on the beauty of the mountain scenery. The same year he translated from the Greek a Treatise on Syllogisms, and other philosophical works, which were followed in 1543 by the Maxims of Stoebus, and in 1544 by the Allegories of Heraclides of Pontus, the Discourse of Dion Chrysostom on Homer, and a purified edition of Martial. In 1545, he made a journey to Venice and to Augsburg, where he formed an acquaintance with several men of merit, and had an opportunity of consulting many rare works and valuable manuscripts. It was then that he began to bring out his famous Bibliothèque Universelle, the first great bibliographical work which the moderns had produced. The titles of all the works then known in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin, whether extant or lost, and often a summary of their contents, with a judgment of their merits, and some specimens of their style, formed the substance of this collection. The first volume, published at Zurich in 1545, is classed in the alphabetical order of the names of the authors; the second, which is arranged in the order of the materials, and divided into nineteen books, appeared at the same place in 1548, under the title of Pandects; the twenty-first book, devoted to theology, was published the following year; but the twentieth, which was to treat of works on medicine, has not been printed, because the author did not conceive it so complete as it ought to be, or as the subject required. The Library of Gesner has been abridged by Lycosthenes, and completed by Simler and by Fries, Zurich, 1583, in folio. During the same time, he occupied himself with editions or translations of different small Greek treatises; in particular, he published a corrected edition of Hermolaus Barbaro, a critical Preface on the works of Galen, another on the History of Plants by Tragus, a Treatise on the Mineral Waters of Switzerland and Germany, and a Description of Mount Pilat near Lucerne. But, amidst these diversified labours, he lost no opportunity of collecting and arranging materials for a great work on Natural History, of which he had conceived the plan from his earliest youth. Numerous friends whom his merit had procured him in almost all Europe, sent him figures and notices of the productions of their various climates, and sometimes the natural objects themselves, which he caused to be painted and engraved. As often as he had leisure, he also travelled in Switzerland and in Germany. He had long desired to visit the coasts of the North Sea, but the religious war which broke out in 1551 constrained him to return home without having accomplished the object of his wishes. Gesner has written on the three kingdoms of nature, but his History of Animals is the most considerable of his works on natural history, and that which will ensure him the most durable reputation. It is divided into five books, which are commonly bound in three volumes folio. The first book, printed originally at Zurich in 1551, treats of viviparous quadrupeds; the second, printed in 1554, of oviparous quadrupeds; the third, printed in 1555, of birds; the fourth, printed in 1556, of fishes and other aquatic animals; and the fifth, a posthumous publication, which appeared at Zurich in the year 1587, of serpents. There was to have been a sixth book on insects, but it is doubtful whether Gesner had commenced preparing it, and all that remains consists of some inedited figures of butterflies. Besides these first editions of the different parts of the History of Animals, there appeared several others, some of which, considerably amplified, were printed during the author's lifetime, or after his death, in Latin, German, and French, and also various abridgments under the titles of Icones Animalium, Icones Animalium, Nomenclator Aquatilium, &c. In this great work, the author arranges animals in the alphabetical order of their Latin names, and gives details respecting each, divided into eight heads, viz. its denominations in the different languages, ancient and modern; its description, internal as well as external, and the countries it inhabits; the duration of its life and of its growth, with the epoch of its fecundation and birth, and the number produced at a birth; the maladies to which it is subject; its peculiar habits and instincts; its utility; the ailments on which it subsists; the remedies which it supplies; and, lastly, the images which it furnishes to poetry and eloquence, as well as the epithets which have been applied to it. In a word, every thing which the ancient authors, or those of the middle age, have written relative to these details, is introduced under one or other of the heads which we have enumerated; and Gesner also adds, with as much critical sagacity as could be employed in an age when the authority of the ancients was still greatly respected and nature very little known, a vast number of new details derived from his own observations, or communicated by his numerous correspondents. He states many exact facts, which are still deserving of attention, particularly respecting the animals of Switzerland; each species is represented by a figure in wood; and those which the author had caused to be copied from nature are very exactly given; but he was also obliged to borrow some of them from his predecessors, and these are not always remarkable for the same degree of accuracy. The history of fishes, however, is not given altogether on the same plan as that of the others; for here Gesner copies, on each species, the articles of his two friends and contemporaries, Belon and Rondelet, to which he has merely made some additions. As the abridgments appeared after the large treatises, they contain several remarks which are not to be found in the latter; and it is necessary to consult both in order to obtain a complete idea of what was then known on the subject. The History of Animals by Gesner may therefore be considered as the basis of all modern zoology. Copied almost literally by Aldrovand, and abridged by Johnston, it has served as the foundation of works much more recent; and more than one celebrated author has borrowed from it, without acknowledgment, nearly all his erudition; for it is deserving of remark, that the passages in the ancient authors which escaped Gesner have scarcely at all been taken into consideration by the moderns. By his accuracy, his clearness, his good faith, and even in some instances the refinement of his views, Gesner merited this confidence; and although he may not have established genera nor natural classification, yet, in various places, he indicates with tolerable distinctness the true relations of beings. Another important service rendered by Gesner to zoology consists in his edition of a complete translation of the works of Aelian, which he published in 1556, immediately after his volume on fishes. His new notes on the text, which had long occupied his attention, appeared for the first time in the edition published by A. Gronovius, London, 1744, two vols., in folio, as those on the Historia Diversa died in the edition of Leyden, 1731, in 4to. Although he has been less fortunate in the publication of his labours on botany, he has perhaps rendered himself even more celebrated in that science by the fecundity of the views which he has introduced into it; for not only was he from his infancy addicted to the collection of plants, and accustomed to rear them, but he soon learned to delineate them, and, in fact, painted more than fifteen hundred, the figures of which he intended for a general history of vegetables. This exercise led him to direct his attention to the numerous details of the flower and the fruit; and he thus succeeded in discovering the art of distinguishing and classing plants by the organs of fructification, an art which has truly created botanical science. In the text he expresses clearly the necessity of attending to characters of this kind in botany. It is to be observed, however, that his Enchiridion Historiae Plantarum, printed at Paris in 1541, is not deserving of much attention; it is a youthful performance of Gesner, and is merely a compilation. His real botanical works, after having passed in manuscript into different libraries, were, about the middle of the last century, acquired by Trew, a botanist of Nuremberg; and published by Schmidel, physician to the margrave of Anspach, Nuremberg, 1754 and 1770. They consist of Commentaries on the fifth book of Valerius Cordus, Fragments of a History of Plants, commenced according to the plan of Gesner, by Wolf, his pupil, and a great number of figures which he had designed, with the relative notes and descriptions. The little treatise of Gesner on the figures of fossils, stones, and gems, Zurich, 1565, in 8vo, attracted attention to the subject of petrifactions and crystals; and we find from his letters, that he had made experiments on several minerals, and was not ignorant of the electrical qualities of certain precious stones. Lastly, in his Mithridates de differentiis Linguarum, Gesner, not confining himself to the comparison of different languages, threw out several very ingenious ideas respecting language generally, which have since been more fully developed. His own acquisitions as a linguist were in fact very considerable. He possessed a knowledge of the three learned languages, had some tincture of Arabic, understood French, Italian, and Flemish, and had laboured much to improve the German language. So many useful works having secured to Gesner merited consideration, the magistrates of Zurich, in the year 1555, created him public professor of natural history. The Emperor Ferdinand I, who loved the sciences, and to whom Gesner had dedicated his History of Fishes, invited him to Augsburg in 1559, and in 1564 granted him a coat of arms emblematic of his pursuits, and at the same time sent him some fragments of bezoar, a substance which was then regarded as exceedingly precious. But he did not long enjoy these marks of esteem. A pestilential malady, which had commenced at Bâle in the spring of 1564, and extended itself to Zurich, where it reappeared the following year with great fury, at length smote Gesner. During these two years Gesner had bestowed great care on the persons who were affected with this disease, and had even written a dissertation on the best method of treating it; but a bubo having showed itself under his right armpit, although it occasioned him but little pain, he considered himself as doomed to fall a victim to the prevailing malady; and, accordingly, having caused himself to be carried into his cabinet, that he might put his works in order, he died there, while he occupied, on the 13th of December 1565, aged only forty-nine years and some months. He bequeathed his library and his manuscripts to Gaspar Wolf, his pupil, whom he charged to publish all that could be extracted from his papers calculated to advance any branch of the natural sciences. (Éloges de M. de Thou; Mémoires de Michelon; Biographie Universelle.)

Gesner, Solomon, author of the death of Abel, and many other works in the German language, was born at Zurich in the year 1730. In his early age he showed few signs of superior abilities; and his progress in the rudiments of education was so slow, that his master gave him up as incapable of any greater attainments than writing out the four elementary rules of arithmetic. He was then placed under the care of a clergyman in the neighborhood, a relation of his father's, who showed himself better acquainted with the art of discovering the natural inclinations of his pupils. This gentleman often carried young Gesner with him into the fields, where he made him observe the beauties of nature; and finding that he took great pleasure in such lessons, and seemed to listen to them with peculiar attention, he occasionally repeated some of the most striking passages of the ancient authors, who have written on these subjects in the most agreeable and pleasing manner. By this ingenious artifice, the mind of young Gesner began to open, and its powers to expand; and it is perhaps owing to this circumstance that he became so fond of the language of Virgil and of Theocritus.

When he arrived at a proper age to think of following some pursuit or business, Gesner made choice of that of bookseller, which was the profession of his father, and in some measure of his family. Of five houses at Zurich engaged in the printing and bookselling business, two were occupied by Gesners; one belonged to two brothers of that name; and the other, that in which our poet had a share, was known by the denomination of Orel, Gesner, and Company. It was known also by the extent of its correspondence, and by the choice and elegance of the works which it gave to the public.

Though Gesner was a bookseller, he did not, however, impair his genius by submitting to the drudgery of business. He indulged himself freely in pursuing his favorite object, and his partners never envied him that time which he devoted to meditation and study. In 1752, he made a tour through Germany, not so much for the purpose of extending his commerce, as to see and become acquainted with those authors who had done honour to their country. The following circumstance, which occurred during this tour, deserves to be mentioned, as it is strikingly characteristic of the timidity which often accompanies rare genius. When Gesner was at Berlin, he was admitted into a literary society, of which Gleim and Lessing were members. Each of the authors who composed it used to read in turn some pieces of their own composition, and Gesner felt desirous of submitting to these able critics a small work, which was his first attempt; but he was far from resembling those poets whom Horace and other satirists have ridiculed, and who stun every one they meet by reciting their verses. As each of the members had done reading, Gesner was observed to move his hand with a kind of tremor towards his pocket, and to draw it back again without bringing out the manuscript which he ought to have produced. Having not as yet published any thing, none of the company could guess the cause of a motion which his modesty prevented him from explaining. The work which he had not the courage to show was his small poem entitled Night, which he published on his return to Zurich in 1753. It was considered as an original, of which no model is to be found among the moderns; but in the opinion of the author, it was only a piece of imaginary painting, or, to use an expression of his own, in one of his letters to Huber, who has translated his works, "a caricature composed in the moments of folly or intoxication." In this little poem he has introduced a short episode on the origin of the glow-worm, containing a poetical explanation of this natural phosphorus, which has all the beauty of Ovid's Metamorphoses, without their prolixity. The success of this essay emboldened the too timid muse of our young bookseller, and he published a pastoral romance called Daphnis, in three cantos. The applause which was deservedly bestowed upon this performance induced the author to publish, some time after, his Idylls and other rural poems, in imitation of those of Theocritus. Pastoral poetry, which at this time was little known in Germany except by translations from foreign poets, began to find many partisans, and to be preferred to every other kind. Desirous, therefore, of tracing out a new path for himself, our poet thought that he could not do a more acceptable service to his countrymen than by painting the felicity and innocence of rural life, and the tender emotions of love and gratitude. The only author worthy of notice who had preceded Gesner in this career was Rost of Leipsic, whose pastoral poems appeared for the first time in 1744. This writer polished the language of the German shepherds; and he had address enough to unite spirit and simplicity in a kind of writing which is insipid without the one, and which becomes unnatural and disgusting if it want the other. He sometimes throws a delicate veil over those images which are deficient in decency, but it is to be regretted that it is often much too light. Such was the antagonist against whom Gesner had to contend. Our poet, however, pursued a different course. Instead of placing, like Rost, his scenes in modern times, he goes back, with Theocritus, to that happy age which we are fond of reviewing when our passions are calm, and when, freed from those anxious cares which hurry us beyond ourselves, we contemplate amidst tranquillity the beauty and fertility of nature. The characters of Gesner's Idylls, therefore, are taken from those societies which exist no longer except in the remembrance, or rather the imagination. His shepherds are fathers, children, and husbands, who blush not at these titles so dear to nature, and to whom generosity, beneficence, and respect for the Deity, are sentiments no less familiar than love. These Idylls were the principal and favourite object of his pursuit, and that part of his works which acquired him the greatest reputation, especially amongst his countrymen. His Death of Abel, which is well known, was published for the first time in the year 1758. It is written, like the rest of his pieces, in poetical prose, and was so much sought after, that it went through no less than three editions in the space of a year, without speaking of the spurious ones which appeared in Holland, at Berlin, and in France. The French edition was followed by several others. One came out in Italian; another in the Dutch language; another in the Danish; and, lastly, two in English, one of them in prose and the other in verse. Amongst the pieces which Gesner published after the Death of Abel was his First Navigator, a poem in three cantos, which many people in Germany consider as his masterpiece. He made an attempt also in the pastoral drama, but not with the same success as in other kinds of rural poetry. He produced likewise, in the same style, Evander and Alcinus, in three acts; and Erastus, a small piece of one act, which was represented with some applause in several societies, both at Leipsic and Vienna.

But though poetry was Gesner's darling pursuit, and though he enriched the literature of his country with works which will render his name immortal, he did not confine himself to one manner of imitating nature; he in turns took up the pencil and the pen, and his active genius equally directed both. In his infancy he had received a few lessons in drawing, and he had afterwards pursued this study, but without any intention of becoming an artist. At the age of thirty he felt that violent desire which may be considered as the voice of genius; and this was in some measure excited by the sight of a beautiful collection formed by Heidegger, whose daughter he had married. To please his father-in-law, he studied this treasure, composed principally of the best pieces of the Flemish school; and to this new taste he had almost sacrificed every other. Gesner at first ventured only to delineate some decorations for the frontispieces of curious books printed in his office; but by degrees he acquired the courage to make other attempts. In 1765, he published ten landscapes etched and engraved by himself, and dedicated them to his friend Wallet. Gesner owed him this mark of respect for the care which he had taken to ornament with beautiful vignettes Huber's translation of his Idyls. Twelve other pieces appeared in 1769; and after these attempts, Gesner executed ornaments for many works which came from his presses, amongst which were his own works, a German translation of Swift, and several other productions.

Were we to judge from Gesner's enthusiasm for his favourite pursuits, and from the time and attention which he bestowed upon them, we should be apt to conclude that he had found but little leisure for discharging his duty as a citizen. The contrary, however, was the case; for he passed almost the half of his life in the first employment of the state. In 1765 he was called to the grand council, and in 1767 to the lesser. In 1768 he was appointed bailiff of Elsbach, in 1776 head of the four guards, and in 1781 superintendent of waters, which office was in 1787 continued to him for six years. In all these stations Gesner discharged his duty with the most scrupulous fidelity, and died of a paralytical disorder, lamented by his countrymen and by those who had the pleasure of his acquaintance, on the 2d of March 1788, at the age of fifty-six.