32 Transactions of the Society. 



them will be the basis of our classification, since it represents 

 the ultimate relationships of the zoological characters of the 

 animal, and of its shell ; ... as for the genera, I have determined 

 them according to the plan of growth, combined with the number, 

 the form, and the positions of the apertures of tlie terminal 

 chamber." Carpenter at the end of his onslaught upon the 

 d'Orbignyan classification says : — " Some suspicion of the un- 

 soundness of his fundamental assumption that the geometrical 

 plan of increase is a character of primary value appears to have 

 crossed the mind of M. d'Orbiguy ; for he admits that affinities 

 exist among all the orders, which arise out of a change in the plan 

 of growth that is liable to occur in many types with the advance 

 of life." ^ The fallacy of d'Orbigny's system, in the light of our later 

 knowledge, is nowhere more apparent than among the sub-families 

 of the family Lagenidte, in which Lagena alone is a Monostegue ; 

 Glandulina, Nodosaria, Orthoceras, Dentalina, Frondicularia, 

 Lingulina, Eimulina, Vaginulina, and Marginulina, are Sticho- 

 stegues ; Cristellaria, Flabellina, Eobulina, and Uvigerina are 

 Helicostegues ; and Dimorphina and Polymorphina are Enallo- 

 stegues. " In no group," says Carpenter, " is the artificiality of 

 his method of classification more apparent ; and there is none in 

 which the results of painstaking research have been more fruitful 

 in elucidating the close natural affinities of organisms, whose 

 diversity of form at first sight appears to require their wide separa- 

 tion from each other." ^ The same remarks may be applied with 

 almost equal force to the family of Eotalidse (see p. 74). We can 

 but bear in mind that d'Orbigny to the end of his life, deeply 

 occupied with vast geological works, never studied the internal 

 structure of the shell, or the living animal, in spite of the pioneer 

 work in this direction of Dujardin (see p. 37).^ But when criticism, 

 even so pungent as that of Carpenter, has exhausted itself, we come 

 back to Albert Gaudry's just appreciation of d'Orbigny's work : — 

 " Before him people had none but confused ideas on the Forami- 

 nifera ; the genera had been multiplied without discernment ; it is 

 he who in truth caused this order of animals to be known." * 



It must be confessed that d'Orbigny held strange views, from 

 which the extent and variety of his material ought to have pro- 

 tected him, upon the distribution of living forms. He expressed 

 the opinion that whilst the Helicostegues, the Enallostegues, and 

 the A»athiste<j;ues are to be found all over the world, the Sticho- 

 stegues are common in the Adriatic, but rare in warm seas, and 

 entirely absent in Oceania and in the Pacific Ocean : whereas the 

 Entomostegues are common in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, 

 but practically non-existent in temperate zones, and quite absent 



1 XVII., p. 6. Carpenter is referring to a passage in the Vienna Memoir 

 (XII., p. 17), which bears this interpretation. 



2 XVII., pp. 55, 161. -J XVII., p. 42. * XVI., p. 833. 



