Alcide d'Orhigny. 17 



III. — d'Okbigny's Generic and Specific Names. 



The student of the Foraminifera whose reasonable curiosity — 

 for it frequently must amount to no more than that — prompts 

 him to endeavour to identify the d'Orbignyan species, can hardly 

 fail to be appalled by the riotous profusion of his specific names, 

 many of them nomina nuda, now fortunately to a great extent 

 alisorbed into the synonymies of later-named species. It is far 

 from uninteresting, however, to examine into the circumstances 

 which led to this wild orgy of nomenclature, especially having 

 regard to the fact that on more than one occasion he severely 

 reproved the multiplication of names regardless of existing 

 nomenclatures.^ 



It must be borne in mind that one of the foundations of his 

 scientific creed was that the successive " animalization " of the 

 terrestrial sphere resulted from twenty-six distinct creations, and 

 that " when he found two fossil shells in two different strata he 

 often separated them into two different species without sufficient 

 motive." '^ He says himself, " If I find in Nature forms which 

 after the most scrupulous analysis present no appreciable differ- 

 ence, though they are separated by an interval of a few strata . . . 

 I should not hesitate for an instant in regarding them as distinct." ^ 

 But he carried it even further than this. He was so convinced 

 that widely separated localities, e.g. the West Indies and the 

 Mediterranean, were characterized by entirely different fauna that 

 he had no scruple in giving to the same shell two different names 

 for no other reason than that they came from such widely 

 separated regions. It is thus that in the various monographs of 

 d'Orbigny almost every species is described as new, with a new 

 specific name.* It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the supply 

 of specific names was sometimes hardly equal to the demand. 

 His biographer Gaudry points out that " when anyone sent him 

 new species it was his custom to dedicate one of them to him. 

 People were glad to see their names perpetuated by that of one of 



' Thus in the Vienna monograph (XII., p. 143) he condemns Bosc for making 

 two new species of Aiveolitei (G. Bosc, " Sur deux nouveUes Alveolites." Bull. 

 Seances Soc. Philomathioue, No. 61, iii. (Paris, 1811) p. 99). He says that 

 " unfortunately at this period, little recking of the works of their predecessors, 

 and particularly of names already given, the authors, as if wantonly, confused 

 matters by giving new names." - XVI., p. 836. 



^ XV., p. xxxviii. He goes on to say that in such cases " we must assume that 

 it is our methods of distinction which are insufficient for finding the differences 

 between these two species, from widely-separated epochs, which resemble one 

 another." 



^ There are scores of such instances : to name only one, having found Cristel- 

 laria {Eobulina) calcar (I., p. 289, No. 12) in the Vienna material, he re-named it 

 Bobulina echinata (XII., p. 100). 



Feb. 21st, 1917 . c 



