46 Transactions of the. Society. 



VIII. — The Canary Islands Memoir. 



The concluding paragraph of the preceding section applies with 

 equal force to the " Histoire Naturelle des lies Canaries," by 

 P. Barker- Webb and Sabin Berthelot, published in Paris between 

 1835 and 1849.^ These gentlemen submitted to d'Orbigny the 

 Algse that they brought back from the Canary Islands, together 

 with a little sand which they had collected at Orotava. On the 

 outward journey to South America (as he tells us in the South 

 American Memoir, see p. 49) the officer in command of the ship 

 " had omitted to regulate his chronometer " (!), and a stay of a few 

 days was made at Teneriffe (August 9, 1826) for the purpose. 

 The delay was hailed by d'Orbigny with almost lyrical enthusiasm. 

 " One must be," he says, " naturalist and enthusiast to form a 

 correct idea of what I felt."- He admits that -the material was 

 limited in quantity, but says that the results exceeded his hopes. 

 He identified forty-three species, though of course he was far from 

 having examined the sands of all, or of any large number of the 

 Islands. The work is therefore essentially imperfect; d'Orbigny 

 records that lie only found, seven Canarian species which were also 

 to be found on the shores of France — all of them the commonest 

 forms.^ Besides these he only found two * wliich he had ever 

 seen elsewhere. He compares the Canarian species with the fossil 

 forms known to him on the lines which he afterwards elaborated 

 in the Vienna Memoir.^ The only genus which he describes as 

 new from the Islands is Webbina,'' and again we are confronted 

 with the fact that the genus Lagena escaped him entirely in this 

 material. It will be appreciated that this was his least important 

 work as regards extent, but what there is of it is of equal value 

 with the rest, and the execution of the plates is equally magnificent. 

 One notices in this work two instances of a type of carelessness 

 which is unfortunately frequent in d'Orbigny 's works — a dis- 



' The title-page of the section of this large folio work, devoted to the Fora- 

 minifera, is inscribed " 105 Livraison 1839," and, below the publisher's notice, 

 "1835-1849." The work was published "Under the auspices of the Minister of 

 Public Instruction." In the completed volumes the contributions of d'Orbigny 

 are in vol. ii., pt. 2, " MoUusques, Echinodermes, Poraminiferes et Polypiers." 

 Foraminiferes : pp. 121-146, and three plates. 



- XXII., p. 5. 



^ Glohigerina bulloides, Orbulina universa, Planorhulina vulgaris (see p. 18), 

 Truncatulina lobatula, T. variabilis, and Textularia sagittula. The seventh was 

 his doubtful species Quinqueloculina laevigata, which he had only found in the 

 Paris Chalk. 



* Lingulina carinata and Rosalina valvulata, from the West Indies. 



^ He was already in communication (as we have seen, ante, p. 44) with Joseph 

 von Hauer, as he tells us in a note on p. 122 (see also note 1, p. 54). 



" VIII., p. 125. As to the species named after Barker- Webb and Berthelot, 

 see p. 93. 



