Alcide d'Orhigny. 5 



the neiglibourlioocl of La Eochelle, from which we learn that it 

 was founded in 1035 by an Irishman named Walton, who was cast 

 ashore by a shipwreck at Esnandes. We have it on the authority 

 of Alcide d'Orbigny, writing in 1845, that the moUusca of the 

 neighbourhood forms or formed the entire and exclusive food of 

 the inhabitants ;^ I am happy to be able to record, however, that 

 the travelling scientist who visits the locality is not necessarily 

 debarred from a carnivorous diet. 



A more propitious locality for Foraminifera to flourish in can 

 hardly be imagined. For the ordinary tourist, however, the feature 

 of Esnandes is a remarkable crenelated and battlemented Eonian 

 church, fortified in Gothic times (twelfth to thirteenth centuries), the 

 castellated choir being added in the fifteenth century (Plate IV). 

 The whole was restored in the nineteenth century. There are several 

 such in the neighbourhood, which served as Hufjuenot fortresses 

 m the times of religious upheaval through which La Eochelle has 

 passed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Close by is the 

 objective point of a pilgrimage which I made to Esnandes in 

 May 191-4. A broad gateway giving access to a large courtyard 

 forms the approach to a substantial house of the yeoman farmer 

 type, which was originally the clergy-house of Esnandes, but 

 that parish being linked with the neighbouring one of Marsilly, 

 it was let to Charles d'Orbigny, and it was here that his collec- 

 tions, destined to form the nuclei of the Musee Fleuriau de 

 Bellevue at La Eochelle and the Musee de Paleontologie at Paris, 

 were accumulated and stored.^ An excellent etching of the house 

 was made by E. Conneau in 1889, which was published in the 

 paper of Beltremieux (Bibl. XXIV.). Mons. L. Musset has 

 made for me a new drawing of the house, which is here reproduced 

 (Plate V). In this house Charles d'Orbigny and his family lived 

 until 1820, when he removed to a house in the Eue des Pretres 

 at La Eochelle, which is to-day, in honour of him and of his son 

 Alcide, called the Eue d'Orbigny.^ The writer of the biography 

 of Alcide d'Orbigny in Larousse* says that he was a pupil at the 

 Lycee of La Eochelle, but regard being had to the distance between 

 Esnandes and La Eochelle, and to the fact that Alcide d'Orbigny 

 was eighteen years old when his family removed to the latter town, 

 I think this is doubtful. 



* " Les habitants des bourgs entiers d'Esnandes, de Marsilly, et de Charron, 

 pres de La RocheUe ne se nourissent que de coquillages " (XI., p. 89, note 2). 



- When the d'Orbigny family first arrived at Esnandes they occupied for a 

 few months a smaller house on the shore of the Anse de I'Aiguillon which was 

 demolished many years ago. 



^ Labonnefon records that the departure of the d'Orbigny family from 

 Esnandes was hastened by the fact that the d'Orbigny house was the "presby- 

 tere " of Esnandes (as above related), and that the Cure at Marsilly wished to 

 take up his residence there. The elder d'Orbigny was requested to give up 

 possession of the house by the Conseil Municipal on December 4, 1820. 



* Dictionnaire Universelle du XIX. Siecle, xi. (1874). 



