72 
locostracés, which contains a complete account and classification of : 
Crustaceans, is by M. Desmarest, with others on the same subject. 
In this work all the articles on Crustaceans had originally been as- 
signed to Dr. Leach ; but when the lamented illness of that distin- 
guished naturalist prevented his finishing this task, it was committed 
to Desmarest, who carefully studied the labours of his predecessor ; 
and, with most laudable industry and self-denial, made it his business 
to follow his method as closely as possible. He also published a 
separate work on Crustaceans in 1825. 
Count Kaspar Sternberg was one of those persons, so valuable in 
every country, who employ the advantages of wealth and rank in 
the cultivation and encouragement of science. He belonged to a 
younger branch of one of the best and oldest families in Bohemia; 
and was closely connected with the persons of most elevated station 
in that country. He was born the 6th of January, 1761, and re- 
ceived a distinguished education at Prague; not only, as was then 
common among the Bohemian nobility, through private tutors, but 
by following the public course of the university. He was created 
Canon of the Chapter of the metropolitan church at Ratisbon, which, 
obliging him to receive the lower degree of holy orders, bound him | 
to celibacy. At Ratisbon, then a considerable place, and the seat 
of the Diet of the German empire, he formed friendships with seve- 
ral eminent persons, and especially with Count Bray (afterwards 
Bavarian minister at various courts), a man of letters, and a distin- 
guished botanist. Count Sternberg also cultivated botany, and be- 
came an active member of the Botanical Society of Ratisbon. Du- 
ring the time that Germany was a prey to the miseries of war, he 
retired to his hereditary country seat Brzezina, in the circle of Pil- 
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 Diluvi- 
anum of Scheuchzer, the Sylva Subterranea of Beutinger, and the 
Lapis Diluvii Testis of Knorr*. At the beginning of the present 
* To the earlier works on this subject we may add Martin’s Petrificata 
