242 Linnean Society. [May 24, 



mineralogical education in the Mining Academy at Freyberg, under 

 the iUustrious Pi'ofessor Werner ; and distinguished himself very 

 early by indefatigable industry, great acuteness, and an enthusiastic 

 love of natural history. His first separate work was published at 

 Leipzig in 1794, under the title of ' Beobachtungen iiber den Kreutz- 

 stein,' and was followed by a ' Versuch einer Mineralogischen 

 Beschreibung von Landeck,' 4to, Berl. 1797, which was regarded 

 on its first appearance as the best mineralogical geography that had ap- 

 peared in Germany, and was translated both into French and English. 

 His next work, entitled ' Geognostische Beobachtungen auf Reisen 

 in Deutschland und Italien,' was published between the years 1802 

 and 1809 ; and his ' Reise durch Norwegen und Lappland,' in 1810. 

 In these two works he established his claim to be regarded as be- 

 longing to the highest rank of observers, not merely by his nume- 

 rous and important geognostic descriptions of the strata of the 

 different tracts of country which he visited and personally examined, 

 but also by his remarks on their geographical distribution, and on 

 that of the more important vegetable forms of the same regions as 

 connected with locality and climate. In 1825 he published his 

 ' Physikalische Beschreibung der Canarischen Inseln,' which was 

 some years afterwards translated into French, and contains, in 

 addition to his geological and physical observations on the surface 

 of the earth and on the constitution and temperature of the atmo- 

 sphere, the first published notice of the Flora of those islands, which 

 he had laid before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin in 1816. Botany 

 indeed always formed a favourite branch of his studies ; and one of 

 his last communications to the Academy, read on the 20th of No- 

 vember 1851 and on the 19th of January 1852, was " On the Nerves 

 of Leaves and their Distribution." He cultivated, in fact, in a much 

 higher degree than most geologists, such a knowledge of plants and 

 animals as might assist him in identifying and determining the fossil 

 species on which geological investigations so greatly depend. This 

 is particularly evinced by his Monographs of several important fossil 

 genera, such as Terebratula, Ammonites, &c. The list of his con- 

 tributions to zoological and geological science, contained in the 

 ' Bibliographia Zoologise et Geologise ' of the Ray Society, contains 

 seventy-eight distinct articles, and is by no means a complete enume- 

 ration of his works. For many years it had been his custom to 

 pass his winters in Berlin, and to devote the finer season to distant 

 journeys in prosecution of his researches ; and the simplicity, truth 

 and honesty of his character had endeared him to the large circle of 



