62 ■ Transactions of the Society. 



to its age.^ Von Zittel, in his admirable review of d'Orbigny's 

 work,- states the foundation of his theory : — " He divided fossi- 

 liferous rocks into six periods {terrains), and subdivided the first 

 five periods into twenty-seven groups (etages). He selected the 

 names of characteristic localities for the designation of the groups 

 of zones, and followed Thurmann's example in adding the affix 

 ' ien ' to give uniformity to the series." We have referred {ante, 

 p. 17) to his fundamental theory that each stratum was the result 

 of a special renewed act of creation, a theory whose principal 

 apologist was Gaudry, who appears to agree with d'Orbigny that 

 there is nothing fantastic in the idea that an anthropomorphic 

 Deity had twenty-six times intervened in the development of the 

 universe, destroying all previously created beings by great catas- 

 trophal convulsions and starting entirely afresh with a new series 

 of creatures.^ " It was in this manner of grouping creatures and 

 of considering Palaeontology that the originality of d'Orbigny is 

 found," says Fischer ; * " he affirmed that a number of times all 

 the species of animals had disappeared to give place to new forms. 

 In each of his zones he noted the appearance, the extinction of 

 orders, of families, and of species. In a word he established the 

 doctrine of successive creations." It is not necessary in this 

 place to deal with this I'undamental error ; the successive criticisms 

 of Barrande, of Darwin, of Philippi, of Deshayes, of Archiac, and 

 a host of other writers have annihilated the d'Orbignyan theory, 

 whilst rendering just tribute to the great services which d'Orbigny 

 rendered to Paleontology ibunded upon that theory. Tlie theory 

 after all originated with Cuvier, whose views he elaborated, and 

 ]&lie de Beaumont supported him.^ " No doubt," says Gaudry, 

 " the first glory of this idea belonged to Cuvier and to Brongniart ; 

 in France, in Germany, and especially in England, many geologists 

 have developed it; but no one fought for it more strenuously than 

 d'Orbigny, and no one has worked harder to promulgate it; "'^ and 

 in a later passage (p. 846), " if we compare the Palaeontology of 

 to-day with, what it was in the days of Cuvier and Brongniart, 

 its original founders, one sees what immense progress it has made, 

 and everyone must admit that d'Orbigny was one- of those who 



^ XXI., p. 445. He illustrates his text by pointing out as a rednctio ad 

 absurdum that if this course is not adopted a historian noting the likeness 

 between Napoleon I. and some of the Roman Emperors might assign Napoleon 

 to the Capitol, and those Boman Emperors to the Tuileries (XV., pp. xv and xxv). 

 But this was a somewhat two-edged argument in the face of his own classification 

 of the Foraminifera and other groups (Bryozoa, Sponges) by external appear- 

 ances only. 



2 XXV., p. 507. = XVI., pp. 835, 838, 841. ■■ XXI., p. 445. 



' As Prof. Marcellin Boulo has put it, " The ideas of d'Orbigny are in some 

 respects a contini;ation of those of Cuvier. With the geologist Elie de Beaumont, 

 he took up and exaggerated the theory of cataclysms." See " La Paleontologie 

 au Museum et I'ffiuvre de M. Albert Gaudry," Revue Scientifique, May 28, 1904. 



^ XVI., p. 837. 



