Alcide tV Orhigny . 11 



most part almost pure gatherings of Amphistegina.^ The original 

 " mounts " of d'Orbigny were merely small oblong slips of coarse 

 brown paper upon which half a dozen specimens of a species were 

 stuck with thick spots of gum. From these, and from the bottles, 

 Basset mounted one hundred and thirty-six slides, which I have 

 carefully examined. Unhappily the modern sunken-cell slide 

 with a removable cover (or without) was not then available in 

 La Eochelle, and Basset having soaked the tests from the papers, 

 or extracted specimens from the bottles, mounted each species on 

 a glass slip in a zinc cell which he covered with a cemented 

 cover-glass, often I am sorry to say before they were dry, so that 

 a great many, indeed nearly all of them, are now merely an 

 indistinguishable mass of mycelium and fungus. Localities are 

 appended to many of the slides, but not by any means to the 

 majority, and these localities were taken apparently haphazard — 

 and in this Dr. Loppe agrees — from the "Tableau Methodique."- 



Deplorable, however, as is the condition of this collection, it 

 is of great, if perhaps principally romantic, interest, as being the 

 original collection of d'Orbigny pere, from which Alcide d'Orbigny 

 made his first studies for the " Tableau Methodique " and from 

 which he constructed his famous " Models." The recent specimens 

 are principally from Eimini and from the bottles referred to ; the 

 fossils, from the beds of Paris, Valognes, Dax, Bordeaux, and other 

 adjacent strata.^ 



It is evident th.at d'Orbigny's serious and systematic work on 

 the " Tableau " did not begin until he was settled at La IJochelle. 

 His observations at Esnandes have been already referred to ; 

 Carpenter, who errs perhaps on the side of severity in his estimate 

 and criticisms of d'Orbigny's work, remarks, "if his determination 

 of their Molluscous nature was based on any actual observations 

 of these animals in their living state, it is certain that such 

 observations must have been of the most superficial character." * 

 We have seen (ante) in, what those observations consisted, and I 

 cannot find any evidence that Carpenter knew of the letter which 

 I have cited in exteoiso ; but Carpenter's view receives some 

 support from the fact that d'Orbigny in the " Tableau " only 

 gives La Eochelle as a locality for two species,^ whereas Earland 

 and I have identified {vide post) no less than 129 species from the 



' " Ces coqviilles microscopiques etaient logees dans des petites bouteilles cii 

 verre buUeux et sur des petits morceaux de carton grisatre qui ne permettaient pas 

 de les voir distinctenient " (Basset, XXIII., p. 154). 



- ]M. Charles Basset, who is described in the list of members for 1885 as 

 " Negociant. Membre titulaire," died at La Eochelle in January, l'J14. 



^ As already noted the types were taken by d'Orbigny to Paris [vide post), 

 but, as Basset observes concerning the La Rochelle collection, "of the 52 genera 

 then known, '67 are represented in the collection, and 38 species are taken as 

 types for the plaster models hereinafter referred to" (XXIII., p. 159). 



* XVII. , p 5. 



^ Polymorphina {Globulina) gibba and sulcata (I., p. 266, Nos. 20, 21). 



