Alcide cVOrhigny. 31 



was "vicious," "unnatural," "defective," and attacked d'Orbigny's 

 genera, which, says d'Orbigny, " he considered doubtful because 

 he did not know them, and others as wrongly based because he 

 confused them with other distinct forms." ^ D'Orbigny and 

 Deshayes had been warm friends, but d'Orbigny never forgave 

 him for this attack ; he expresses his regret that Deshayes could 

 not understand the Models, and that he had gone beyond his 

 province of the MoUusca which he did understand, that if he had 

 not done so " he would not have tried to upset in one day the 

 result of six years' work upon animals quite different to any he 

 knew," and which d'Orbigny (in 1839) clung to as being generally 

 adopted in Europe, whilst the classification of Deshayes had not 

 l^een followed. D'Orbigny was particularly sore upon a point 

 upon which, as it happened, Deshayes was perfectly right, namely 

 the close relationship, if not the identity, of Frondicularia and 

 Flabellina. He continually returned to this point in his later 

 works,- relying on their occurrence in different geological strata, 

 which (as we have seen, ante, p. 17) was always for him enough 

 to remove a closely allied form to a new genus or species. It 

 must be confessed that the arrangement suggested by Deshayes 

 for the Foraminifera, which he called Polypodes, was the pre- 

 cursor of the now generally accepted classification. " Finally," 

 said d'Orbigny,'^ " M. Deshayes not having adopted like me the 

 plan of growth of the shells as the basis of his classification, has 

 gone off' upon another tack, which has led him to a method of 

 which I confess I have hitherto in vain endeavoured to discover 

 the basis." 



Menke in 1830 * had adhered to the d'Orbignyan classification 

 of the Foraminifera, which he renamed TrematoiJhora. 



D'Orbigny, as we have observed, clung to his classification to the 

 last, though he amalgamated some of his genera and abandoned some 

 of his sub-families, such as Mucronina ( = Nodosaria),^ Soldania, 

 Planularia (= Cristellaria), Gyroidina, Planulina (= Anomalina), 

 Citharina (= Vaginulina).^ In 1844 he repeated, ^ " the arrange- 

 ment of the segments or chambers of the shell which contains 



' VII., p. XXV. 



"- VII., p. 19 ; X., pp. 7, 19, 23 ; XII., p. 93. See also XVII., p. 164. 



^ VII., p. xxvi. 

 '* C. T. Menke, " Synopsis methodica MoUuscorum." Pyrmont, 1830, p. 4. 



« VII. p. 12 (note). 



^ At the same time, whilst d'Orbigny was instituting hundreds of new species 

 on what seem to us to-day to be very inadequate grounds, he did not hesitate on 

 occasion to amalgamate species differentiated by his predecessors. As, for instance, 

 Orbiculina numismalis, in which he "lumped" 0. angulata (Lam.), O. adunca 

 (F. & M.), and 0. uncinata (Lam.) (I. p. 306). Carpenter remarks upon it : — " He 

 arrived at this result, of the truth of which I am myself well assured, by the com- 

 parison of a great number of specimens, a process which it would have been well 

 for science if he had more constantly adopted " (XVII., p. 93). 



' XIII., p. 665. See also XVII., p. 6. 



