Alcide d'Orhigny. 55 



publislied, d'Orbigny, plunged as he was in the execution of 

 projects of publication almost chimseric in their vastness, had 

 realized that his " grand ouvrage " was destined to remain for 

 ever in the limbo of unwritten books — that vast and shadowy- 

 library situated on the road to the nether-world, whose shelves 

 are filled with phantom volumes announced for publication by 

 ambitious authors, but suppressed by the inexorable censor, Time. 

 Not only did he give diagnoses of all the genera named in his 

 table, both recent and fossil, but he even added a crowded plate, 

 containing fifty-eight figures of " all the genera which have not yet 

 been discovered fossil in the Vienna Basin," and he tells us that 

 he has considered it necessary to reproduce in this volume the 

 general characteristics of the Foraminifera already given in his 

 other works/ We find on this plate the only figures he ever 

 published of what may be called the unique species of d'Orbigny 

 Rimulina glabra, ConuLina conica, Robertina ardica, Cuneolina 

 jjavonia,'^ and Uniloculina indica. (See Section XVI.). He gave 

 figures in this Memoir of eight species named in the " Tableau 

 Methodique " which had never been figured before, besides re- 

 figuring some five and twenty species cited in the " Tableau " and 

 from earlier authors,^ and he also retigured ten Soldanian species 

 from actual specimens found in the Vienna material.* This is 

 the only Memoir of d'Orbigny for which he did not draw the 

 figures himself ; they were drawn and lithographed by Delarue. 

 "They will do honour," says d'Orbigny, "to the skilful hand 

 and great talents of observation of this distinguished artist, 

 to whom Paleontology is indebted for such goed work " ; they 

 rank certainly among the finest figures of Foraminifera ever 

 published. 



The leading theme of this Memoir is the exposition of 

 d'Orbigny's views upon the relative distribution of the Fora- 

 minifera in geological strata and the existino- oceans.^ It would 

 be impossible to give more than a passing glance at this portion 

 of his work, but it is very interesting to mark the progress of 

 palaiontological knowledge by comparing it with Chapman's 

 extended and conscientious labours in the same field.'^ As to 

 tlie precise formation from which the material was obtained he 

 hesitated to pronounce a definite opinion ; Bronn had placed the 

 beds between the London Clay and the Subapennine, and in the 

 Miocene of Lyell ^ d'Orbigny regarded them as much more recent, 

 but he deferred any definite pronouncement until such time as 



^ XII., pp. ix aud 3, pi. xxi. 



- Reproduced in the " Cours Elementaire," XIV., vol. ii., p. 203, fig. 330. 



-' XX., p. 259. < XX., p. 260. "' XXI., p. 436. 



" F. Chapman, "The Foraminifera." London (Longmans), 1902. 



• Neues Jahrb. f. Min., etc., 1837, pp. 408, 431. 



