Alcide cCOrhignij. 9 



(v, 1844-5, pp. 662-671, Bibl. XIII.).' He became secretary of 

 the Geological Society of France, and joint Professor with Cordier 

 at the Museum de Paris, and he died in Paris, February 14, 1876, 

 aged seventy.- (See Appendix A.) 



The years which immediately followed the migration of the 

 family from Esnandes to La Eochelle were pregnant with great 

 issues. Apart from the rich Foraminiferal fauna of the neigh- 

 bouring shores, and the abundant fossil forms which were at hand 

 in the Upper Jurassic strata of the surrounding country, the 

 mediseval charm and historical associations of the place cannot 

 have been without their influence upon the impressionable mind 

 of an ardent young naturalist. La Eochelle is not an easy place 

 to get to, and the old Huguenot stronghold conveys an impression 

 of not having been very much modernized since the days of 

 religious struggle in the sixteenth century, or of the great Siege 

 of 1627-28. Euined commercially by the cession of Canada to 

 Great Britain in 1763, it relapsed into old-world desuetude, and 

 one has but to stroll from the Port, with its quaint towers of the 

 fifteenth century, to the wonderful Hotel de A^ille of the thirteenth 

 century, between the timbered and arcaded houses of the Eue des 

 Merciers, to realize that he is in a back-water of the stream of 

 life : adown the narrow streets beneath the porticoes, it is not 

 difficult for him to whom historical romance makes appeal, to 

 imagine the Three Musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, with 

 the irrepressible Artagnan, flaunting their diversified individualities 

 fresh from their exploit at the Bastion St. Gervais, in the brilliant 

 train of the Great Cardinal. Here Eeaumur was born in 1683 ; here 

 was born that grim figure of the Eevolution, the Conventionnel 

 Billaud-Varennes, who had died only the year before the 

 d'Orbigny family arrived there ; here were born in 1775 Admiral 

 Duperrey, on whose voyage round the world Lesson collected Fora- 

 minifera for d'Orbigny (see note 1, p. 13), and in 1773 the botanist 

 Bonpland, who was one of the intimate friends of the family,^ and 



' The manner of publication of this work, in " livraisons " extending over a 

 period from 1839 to 1849, has resulted in some confusion iu dating the com- 

 pleted volumes. A careful analysis and study of these dates has been made by 

 C. Davies Sherborn, in Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 7, iii. (1899) pp. 350-2 

 (see note 2, p. 58). 



- Not on the 15th, as has been stated. Charles d'Orbigny the younger died a 

 widower, without children. One of the brothers, Edouard, had five children : 

 (1) Gaston, who died Inspecteur des Enfants assistes. (2) Alcide, who was elected 

 Conseiller municipal in 1874, Conseiller General du Departement de la Charente 

 Inferieure, and Maire of La Rochelle in the years 1895-1905. He was made 

 Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1897, and died at Nice April 9, 1907. (3) A 

 daughter Marie, wife of M. G. Perrier, at La Rochelle. Of the death of the other 

 two sons we have given an account in Appendix A. 



' In this year also, at La Eochelle, was born Fromentin, and in 1825 (the year 

 of the " Tableau Methodique ") Bouguereau, two of France's greatest painters of 

 all time. 



