Alcide d'Orligny. 57 



from the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the lied Sea, and some 

 fossils from Sienna and Austria ; they were themselves Austrians, 

 and we may forgive d'Orbigny for flattering them a little as being 

 compatriots of von Hauer. 



The material for the Vienna Memoir came from many localities 

 in the neighbourhood of Vienna and Baden. As we have seen 

 {ante, pp. 45, 54), von Hauer was in communication with d'Orbigny 

 on the subject in 1838, and d'Orbigny had sent him a preliminary 

 report, which von Hauer published in 1839/ Since that time 

 von Hauer had extended his collections and pursued his researches, 

 and by 1844 had collected " the richest Foraminiferal fauna ever 

 met with in any country," '^ and wrote asking d'Orbigny to compose 

 a special work upon them. Being tlien, as he points out, fully 

 occupied with his " Paleontologie Francaise " and his " Amerique 

 Meridionale," he hesitated to undertake the task, but fearing that 

 the results of these valuable labours might be lost to science he 

 finally determined to embark upon it, in spite of the numerous 

 sacrifices which it entailed upon him, encouraged thereto by the 

 patronage of the Emperor of Austria, who undertook to defray all 

 the expenses of publication and illustration. The work occupied 

 him for two years, and he signed the Introduction on July 30, 

 1846. He separated and recorded 228 species, a larger number, 

 he says, than are to be found in any existing ocean — another 

 of those sweeping generalities to which d'Orbigny was so much 

 addicted. 



As might be expected when dealing with fossil forms, he 

 makes a new species of practically everything, and claims as 

 his own any species which he removes into another genus, but 

 the synonymies in this work ai'e fuller than any he has attempted 

 before, and when he claims a species in this manner the original 

 author is given.^ 



^ J. von Hauer, " Mittheilung au Prof. Bronn gerichtet, Bestimniiiug der 

 Wiener Foraminiferen durch d'Orbigny, und Entomostraceen von dort," Neues 

 Jahrb. f. Min., etc. (Stuttgart, 1839), pp. 428-9. This communication, which is 

 dated February 18, 1839, was accompanied by a set of duplicates — so far as he had 

 duplicates — of the species von Hauer had sent to d'Orbigny, with a complete list 

 of names as determined by him. The sx^ecimens were all from Nussdorf, and 

 numbered seventy-four. The letter is followed (j). 430) by another from von 

 Roemer, to whom Bronn appears to have sent the specimens and list (at von 

 Hauer's request) for the purpose of coiuparing them with his " Cephalopoden," 

 described the previous year from the North German Tertiary Marine Sand (Neues 

 Jahrb. f. Min., etc. (1838), pp. 381-394, pi. iii.), and to check the nomenclature (!) 

 Roemer tells us that he possessed a collection of 300 species, and on comparing 

 the Vienna species with his own, he disagrees with the nomenclature of nine out 

 of thirteen species common to both collections. It need not, therefore, surprise 

 us to find that d'Orbigny did not greatly appreciate von Roemer (see p. 56). 



- XII., p. ix. 



^ See specially the elaborate synonymies of Cristellaria cassis (p. 91), Cristel- 

 laria (Rohulina) cultrata (p. 96), and Polystomella crispa (p. 125), which according 

 to his practice is ascribed to Lamarck. 



