OESNE11, CONRAD, an eminent scholar and naturalist, who was a thining example of the truth of the remark, that those who have most so do, and are willing to work, find most time. Beginning his career under all the disadvantages attendant on poverty, sickness, and domestic calamity, and cut off at the early age of forty-eight, Gesner left behind him, notwithstanding the cares of the medical profession which he actively and successfully exercised, such an amouut of literary labour as would have won for him the title of one of the most learned and industrious of men, if bis useful life had been occupied solely in its production. Zurich was his birth-place, where on the 26th of March 1516 be came into the world to add to the difficulties of his parents, who were struggling to support a large family. His father appears to have been a skinner or worker in hides, and his mother's name was Frieda% or Frick. To his maternal uncle, John Friccius, he seems to have been indebted for kind assistance and tuition ; but this good relation died—his father was killed at the battle of Zug (1531), when the son was only fifteen—and the poor lad, after struggling with a dropsical disorder, set out for Strasbourg to seek his fortune. Ho was among strangers, but his spirit bore him up ; and in the service of the well kuown Lutheran, Wolfgang Fabricius Capito, he resumed the study of the Hebrew language, which he had begun to learn at Zurich. On his return to Switzerland the academy of Ziirich allowed him a pension, which enabled him to travel in Franco. At Bourget', where he stayed a year, Greek and Latin principally engaged his attention; and to assist in defraying his expousee, he taught in school. From Bourgee he proceeded to Paris, where ho does not appear to have done much; and after a short stay at Strasbourg, whither ho was led by the hope of employment, the University of Zurich sent for him, and he became a teacher there. He now married, at the age of twenty, not with the approbation of his friends, who saw that his income could not be equal to his wants.
The church was his destination, but the strong impulse of his mind stimulated him to the study of physic, to which ho determined to apply himself with a professional vie ; and, resienieg his situation at Zurich, he went to Basel as a medical student, his pension being still coetinued. Hero lie amnia to have commenced his labours for the public in superintendiug the edition of the Greek Dictionary of Plus voritma; and lie accepted the Greek professorship in the newly-founded university of Lame:Inns lie afterwards passed a year at Montpellier, where he formed an intimate acquaintance with Laurent Joubert, the celebrated physician, and Roudeletitis, the great naturalist. Ills
emoluments were now not only adequate to hie expenses, hat more over enabled him to prosecute the medical and botanical pursuits so dear to him ; and at Basel in 1511, or as others say iu 1540, he took his degree of Doctor in Medicine. Zurich was the field of his practice, which enabled him to cultivate his taste for natural history. lie founded and supported a botanic garden, collected a fine library, made numerous drawings, and gave constant employment to a painter and to an engraver iu wood. In the midst of his laborious profession, the astonishing industry of the man found time for tho principal works on which his fame rests. He lived honoured and respected for his talents and benevolence in his native town, till an attack of the pestilence which he had successfully combated iu the cases of others, and to which his professional activity most probably exposed hini, carried him off in his forty-ninth year, on the 13th of December 1565. His remains rest in the cloister of the great church at Zurich, near those of his friend Frisius. lie was bewailed in abundance of Latin and in some Greek verses. Theodore Beza was among the most elegant of these tributaries; and his funeral oration was pronounced by Jusias Simler; who wrote his life (1566, 4to), of which Gamer himself had given some details in his Bibliotheca; but perhaps the most com plete biography is that of Schmiedcl, prefixed to Gesner's botanical works. JIe must have been much lamented by his contemporaries ; for, in addition to his other amiable qualities, he appears to have been a general peacemaker—his calm, candid, and equable temper enabling him to soothe the angry feelings of authors under their real or imagined wrongs; and ho was always ready to lay aside his own labours to assist others. Ho devoted his timo to the supervision and publication of Moiban's work on Dioseorides for the emolument of his deceased friend's family; and the 'Iliatoria Plantarum ' of Valerius Cordus was after the death of the author edited by (leaner ; as well as the 'Lexicon Rei Herbarire Trilingue ' of David 'Cyber, who died of the plague at Strasbourg in 1553.