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, a furrier, and Barbara Frick, persons who, besides being poor, had several other children, so that he would not have been Gesner, 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 literature, and gave him his first ideas of botany. But this uncle having died, and his father having been killed in 1531 at the battle of Albis, 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 guide and without restraint his passion for all kinds of study, being assisted in his poverty by John Steiger, a young Bernese of patrician 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 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 Bern 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 Stoibecus, 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 Mont 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 over 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 enduring 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 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 Avium, 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 aliments 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. This work may 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. Another important service rendered by Gesner to zoology consists in his edition of a complete translation of the works of Ælian, 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. folio, as those on the Historia Diversa did in the edition of Leyden, 1731, 4to. His Euchiridion 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 Schmidal, physician to the margrave of Ansach, Nuremberg, 1754 and 1770. They consist of Commentaries on the fifth book of Valerius Cordus, Fragments of a History of Plants, commenced according Gessner, to the plan of Gesner, by his pupil, Wolf, 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, 8vo, attracted attention to the subject of petrifications 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 knowledge 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. But he did not long enjoy this mark 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 he 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 thus 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. (*Eloges de M. de Thou; Mémoires de Nictéron; Biographie Universelle.*)