Alcidc d'Orhigny. 33 



from cold areas/ The complete fallacy of this hypothesis, founded, 

 indeed, upon a fallacious system, has been amply demonstrated 

 since his time. 



His studies led him to the final conclusion, based upon the 

 zoological characters of Echinoderms and Polyzoa, that the Fora- 

 minifera must be placed zoologically between them, being inferior 

 in organization to the former, but superior to the latter. It 

 was left for Dujardin to settle this matter, and he did so, but 

 d'Orbigny in his latest works retained and expressed the above 

 view.'^ 



In conclusion, I can biit express the regret, which must be 

 shared by all students of the Foraminifera, that d'Orbigny's 

 geological work prevented the completion and publication of his 

 " grand ouvrage," and that the exquisite drawings Mdiich he made 

 to accompany it were likewise left unfinished, and have remained 

 to this day the " Planches inedites." 



V. — The "Planches Inedites." 



Latreille in his Report (as we have seen, p. 22) stated that 

 seventy-three plates accompanied the " Tableau Methodique " ; 

 d'Orbigny himself in the Cuba Memoir says that his Order was 

 " based upon the study of over six hundred species, of which the 

 drawings have been submitted to the Academic." ■' 



It is not too much to say that these plates are quite unknown 

 to the present generation of Rhizopodists. Terquem, writing in 

 1882,* states (with a wealth of exaggeration), " He had drawn all 

 the species mentioned in the ' Tableau Methodique,' and had 

 thus prepared 300 quarto plates. The material and documents 

 thus collected by d'Orbigny remained for a long time unused, and 

 it is only recently that their importance has been recognized ; the 

 types of d'Orbigny have been carefully arranged in tubes and put 

 in order ; the ' Planches inedites,' in which the figures bear the 

 numbers assigned to their sj)ecies in the ' Tableau,' were used for 

 the determination of the Tertiary fossils, which could be at the 

 same time compared with the types ; " and he appends a '•■ note " to 

 the effect that " The Planches having remained inedites and the 

 types unknown, the result has been that all the authors who have 



1 VII., p. xliv. "- XII., p. 17 ; XIII., p. 669. 



^ VII., p. xxii. He was including in this number not only the species insti- 

 tuted in the " Tableau," but also the later species which make their appearance 

 in the Memoirs published in 1839-40. 



■* O. Terquem, " Foraminiferes de TEocene de Paris," Mem. Soc. Geol. 

 France, ser. 3, ii., Mem. 3, p. 11. 



Feh. 21st, 1917 D 



