Alcidc d'Orhigny. 61 



He accomplished in fact the ambition of Buffon, and took up the 

 legacy of work which that savant bequeathed to posterity.^ 



We must consider the vohimes which form the subject-heading 

 of this section in the order of their date, but the three issues are 

 inseparably connected. The " Prodrome " was published between 

 vols. i. and ii. of the " Cours Eleraentaire " ; it was announced as 

 "appearing in a few months" in vol. i. (p. 259, note), and as 

 containing all the evidence upon which his generalizations of all 

 sorts were founded. He tells us it was finished in 1847, but, as in 

 the case of the " Cours de Paleontologie Generale," its publication, 

 which he expected to take place in 1848, was delayed by the 

 Ee volution of that year, and it could not appear before 1849. 

 Vol. i. is dated ISnO. This accounts for the date 1847 appended 

 to a great number of the species enumerated.'-^ It had taken him 

 fourteen years to compose, and was the outcome of more than 

 200,000 references and evidences.^ He says himself that " the 

 ' Cours Elementaire ' contains the ' conclusions,' the ' Prodrome ' 

 the evidence. They are two works which are really one ; a whole 

 divided into several parts." * The " Prodrome " is quoted as a 

 published work in the first pages of vol. ii. of the " Cours Elemen- 

 taire." The two together set forth the scientific doctrine of 

 d'Orbigny,^ and he says himself, in the Introduction to the 

 " Prodrome," that it is his " profession of faith " (pp. xxxiii and 

 xlix). I have pointed out the factors which led to his institution 

 of a vast number of species, and in the same year that saw the 

 publication of the " Prodrome " he tells us himself ^ that 24,000 

 distinct species of fossils are known to him. 



The text elaborated by d'Orbigny in these volumes is that the 

 name and nature of a fossil are of secondary importance compared 



1 Buffon, Hist. Nat., Section " IMiueraux," 1st ed. 1783-8, vol. iv. (1786) p. 157. 

 " C'est surtout dans les coquillageset les poissons, premiers habitants du globe que 

 Ton pent compter un plus grand nombre d'especes qui ne subsistent plus ; nous 

 n'entreprendrons pas d'en donner ici Teuum^ration . . . ce travail sur la vieille 

 nature exigerait seul xdIus de temps qu'il ne m'eu reste k vivre, et je ne puis que la 

 recommander a la posterity." Vou Zittel states, however, that d'Orbigny's 

 " Prodrome " was less complete than Bronn's Index Paleontologica (XXV., 

 p. 365). 



^ XV., p. lix. D'Orbigny pursued a practice in several of his works, which has 

 been condemned by all naturalists, of appending to his species a MS. date of this 

 kind. It is of course universally accepted that a species must date from the 

 time of its publication, a principle which d'Orbigny himself insisted upon in his 

 various writings upon nomenclature (see p. 65). 



^ Fischer commenting upon these figures in 1878 points out that in 1868 

 Bigsby (Thesaurus Siluricus, London, 1868) had enumerated 8,897 species from 

 the Silurian alone, and that it was probable that by the end of the nineteenth 

 century more than 100,000 would have been enumerated (XXI., p. 444) 



^ XV., p. Ivii. 



" XXI., p. 443. 



" " Recherches zoologiques sur la marche successive de I'animalization a la 

 surface du globe, depuis les temps zoologiques les plus anciens jusqu'a I'^poque 

 actuelle," Comptes Rendus, Ac. Sci., xxx., 1850. 



