Anniversary of 1839. Address of the President. 385 



sen, in the north-western part of Bohemia. Here his attention was 

 early drawn to the coal formation, of which mineral he possessed an 

 extensive estate at Radnitz. He soon formed the intention of pub- 

 lishing representations of the fossil vegetables belonging to the coal 

 strata. These had already begun to excite the attention of geolo- 

 gists. Some of these works, containing notices on such subjects, 

 preceded the existence of sound geology, as the Herbarium Diliivi- 

 anum of Scheuchzei', the Sylva Subterranea of Beutinger, and the 

 Lapis Diluini Testis of Knorr*. At tlie beginning of the present 

 century, Faujas de St. Fond had published in the Annales du Mu- 

 seum some impressions of leaves, not indeed belonging to the coal, 

 but to a later formation. These impressions were examined and 

 determined by Count Sternberg, in the Botanical Journal of Ratis- 

 bon, in 1803. In the following year appeared the first truly scien- 

 tific work on this subject, the ^^ Flora der Vorivelt" of Schlotheim, 

 in which the great problem which was supposed to demand a solu- 

 tion was, Whether the vegetables of which the traces are thus ex- 

 hibited belong to existing or to extinct kinds ? Count Sternberg 

 was in Paris when he received the work of Schlotheim, and he stu- 

 died it carefully by the aid of the collections which exist in that 

 metropolis. He published in the Annales du Museum a notice on 

 the analogies of these plants, but concluded with observing, that a 

 greater mass of facts was requisite ; and that, these once collected, 

 tlie general views which belong to the subject would come out of 

 themselves. 



Bearing in mind this remark of his own, when fortune, after the 

 storming of Ratisbon in 1 809, set him down in the midst of the great 

 coal formations of Bohemia, he proceeded forthwith to manage the 

 working of his mines, so as to preserve as much as possible the 

 most remarkable impressions of fossils. Combining his own speci- 

 mens with those found in other places, he began to publish, in 1820, 

 his " Essay towards a Geognostic-botanical Representation of the 

 Flora of the Pre-existing World." In this work he not only gave a 

 great number of very beautiful coloured engravings of vegetable 

 fossils, but also attempted a systematic classification of them. But 

 he stated, in the first portion of his workf, that the problems, im- 

 portant alike for botany and geology, which offered themselves, 

 could only l)e solved by condjined labours on a common plan ; and 

 after mentioning the various European Societies to which he looked 

 for assistance (among which he includes this Society), he adds, " Bo- 

 hemia and the hereditary states of the Austrian empire, I am ready, 

 with some friends of science, to make the subject of continued in- 

 vestigation." The specimens of wliich lie published representations, 

 witii many more, formed the Count's collection at his castle of Brze- 

 zina ; but he declared in the outset, that as soon as tiie National Bo- 

 lieniian Museum at J^rague was provided with the means of receiving 



• To the carlifT works on this subject we may add Martin's Petrificata 

 JJer/w/is/a, jjulilished 1809 ; and Parkinson's Organic Remains (1804), 

 which contains many ])latcs of vegetables. 



•I Ersti-r lli-fl, p. IG. 



Phil. Mag. S. 3. Vol. \^. No. 90. May 1839. 2 C 



