Alcide d'Orligny. 19 



IV. — The "Tableau Methodique de la Classe des 



Cephalopodes." 



It is a matter of great interest and importance to note, as one 

 cannot help doing as lie peruses not only the "Tableau Methodique," 

 but also d'Orbigny's later works and the observations made upon 

 them by his contemporaries, how it came about that this young 

 naturalist of twenty-three years of age came to publish a work 

 which was admittedly incomplete, which was, as he himself 

 repeatedly emphasized, merely the " Prodrome " of a larger work 

 destined never to be completed, but which has nevertheless 

 remained the foundation of the modern study of the F'oraminifera. 



That the " Tableau Methodique " was no more than a pre- 

 liminary publication is made clear by his own statements contained 

 therein and in his later works. He alludes to it as a " Prodrome " 

 in a note to the original title, and elsewhere in the " Tableau." ^ 

 In the Cuba Memoir he first published diagnoses of his genera, 

 not only of those appearing in that work, and in the " Tableau," 

 but of all which were known to him at that time. He says : 

 " I give here a Genera and a resumd of the general observations 

 which I propose to publish later in a special work on the 

 Foraminifera, both recent and fossil, upon which I have been 

 occupied for many years," ^ and in the same work, referring to 

 Deshayes' " Mcmoire sur les Alveolines," ^ in which five of his 

 species with their synonymies are given, saying that Deshayes 

 had elaborated what he had only been able to give " in an abbre- 

 viated form such as was rendered necessary by the limits which 

 I was obliged to set to my ' Tableau,' not being able then to 

 publish my general work on the Foraminifera." ^ In his Memoir 

 on the Cretaceous Foraminifera of the Paris Basin he adds : 

 " Unfortunately my departure for America prevented my pub- 

 lishing the entire work, and Prodrome alone appeared." ^ De 

 Ferussac, in his Introduction to the " Tableau," speaks of " the 

 great work already in an advanced state which he is preparing 

 upon these little shells," and says that he has already completed 

 nearly half of the plates for this great work. It would appear 

 that de Ferussac's original intention was that the complete work 

 should form part of the " Suite des Monographies de toutes les 

 classes des Cephalopodes," which he had in contemplation.^ 

 D'Orbigny in the "Tableau" tells us that "the history of the 

 ISTummulites is too confused for me to give here a complete list 



1 I., pp. 96, 121, 132. 2 VII., p. xii. 



■' Ann. Sci. Nat., xiv. (1828), pp. 225-236. ' VII., p. 70. 



" X., p. 2. '^ I., pp. 118, 119, 120, 121. 



c 2 



