Transactions of the Society, 



EXPLANATION OF THE PLATES. 



PLATE 



I. — Alcide d'Oibigny, from a lithograph by Lavallee, 1839. 

 II. — Esnandes : The " bouchots," with a shrimp-catcher. 

 III. — ,, The "aeons " of the mussel-fishers. 



IV. — ,, The fortified church. 



V. — ,, The house of .the d'Orbigny family (1914). 



VI. — Fig. 1. The " Fleuriau de Bellevue " Microscope, preserved at La Rochelle. 

 ,, 2. D'Orbigny's later Microscope, in the possession of Mme. Henri 

 d'Orbigny. 

 VII. — Alcide d'Orbigny, from a daguerreotype of 184-3 in the Musee de Pal^on- 

 tologie in Paris. 

 VIII. — Reduced facsimile of the Planche in^dite of " Rosalina." 

 IX.— Ditto of "Rotalia." 

 X. — Fig. 1. Conulina conica, after d'Orbigny. 



,, 2. CMncoZwiapavonia, after d'Orbigny and Carpenter. 

 „ 3. Uniloculina indica, after d'Orbigny. 



„ 4. Cruciloculina triangularis, after d'Orbigny and Carpenter. 

 ,, 5. Botalia dubia, after Fornasini, from the Planches in6dites. 

 XL — Esnandes : The strand, at high water-mark. 

 XII. — Group of Foraminifera from Esnandes. 

 XIII. — Group of Foraminifera from Chatelaillon. 



Introduction. 



The verdict of posterity upon the work of d'Orbigny was antici- 

 pated by Geoffroy-St. Hilaire and Latreille ^ and by de Ferussac "^ 

 when they announced to the scientitic world in 1825 that "the 

 Order of the Foraminifera was a creation of d'Orbigny," and it 

 was pronounced by Parker and Jones in 1871 when they said : 

 " with all its faults, and they are neither few nor small, the 

 ' Tableau Methodique ' by Alcide Dessalines d'Orbigny ^ must be 

 regarded as the alphabet of the Nomenclature of the Foramini- 

 fera";* by Van den Broeck in 1876, who said: " le 'Tableau 

 Methodique,' malgre ses nombreuses imperfections n'est pas inoins, 

 pour son epoque un remarquable monument de sagacite," ^ and, 



1 XVI., p. 818, - L, p. 117. 



* D'Orbigny's Christian name has been shrouded in some confusion. There 

 is no doubt he was baptized Alcide Charles Victor Marie (XXIL, p. 3; XXL, 

 p. 434), but he adopted in his earlier works his father's family, or rather terri- 

 torial, name, and he describes himself as "Alcide Dessalines d'Orbigny fils " on 

 the labels affixed to the boxes in which his " Models" were issued, and so signed 

 the autograph dedication on the fly-leaf of the copy of the catalogue presented 

 by him to the Museum at La Rochelle (XXIIL, p. 160). In the " Tableau Metho- 

 dique" he calls himself "A. Dessalines d'Orbigny" (p. 96) and "Dessalines 

 d'Orbigny" (p. 245), but in the Monographs of 1839 and 1846, and in all his later 

 geological works, he is called merely " Alcide d'Orbigny." 



' XX., p. 145. 



' XXIIL, p. 170; E. van den Broeck. Foraminiferes de laBarbade, Brussels, 

 1876, p. 51. 



