64 Transactions of the Society. 



those types through a vast succession of geological epochs." I'ut 

 Carpeuiber was to some extent at fault here, for, as we have shown 

 in another place, the earliest recorded Furaminifera were of types 

 which are far from primitive.^ 



It must be admitted that d'Orbigny arms his opponents with 

 a powerful argument in the course of his passionate plea for the 

 necessity of combining zoological with palseontological knowledge, 

 and both with geology. He points out that the palaeontologists 

 and geologists, ignorant of each other's special branch of science, 

 have given to the same form many different names, both generic 

 and specific - — a two-edged argument, such as may be often found 

 scattered through his works. At the same time, it must be con- 

 ceded that he did not spare his own faults whilst criticizing those 

 of others ; ^ in the "Prodrome" he remarks with some quaintness, 

 " I have revised my own works with the more severity, as I was 

 not afraid of offending the author, whom I am far from regarding 

 as infallible."* D'Orbigny's plea was far from acceptable to a 

 certain section of contemporary geologists. On the publication of 

 the first volume of the " Paleontologie Franc^aise," in which it was 

 voiced, Constant Prevost made himself their spokesman ; he wrote 

 in 1845 : " I protest against the daily growing abuse of the applica- 

 tion of Palffiontology to Geology." ^ But Fischer tells us that the 

 d'Orbignyan school was in no way discouraged by these fulmina- 

 tions.^ JD'Orbigny prided himself on his patience under criticism, 

 and states his aversion to scientific polemics ; but this was after he 

 had devoted twelve pages to a fairly pungent reply to the criticisms 

 of Quenstedt,'' to which he returned with some force, later. 



It follows from what has gone before that d'Orbigny 's nomen- 

 clature is frequently terrifying in its vastness of ramification. 

 The system upon which he proceeded is set forth at great length in 

 the " Prodrome,"* and is practically that adopted by the Inter- 



* Heron-Allen and Earland, in Jouru.' Quekett Micr. Club, ser. 2, xii. 

 (1913), p. 3 (see also p. 72 infra). - XV., pp. xi, xii. 



^ Gf. the corrections and the suppressions contained in the Cuba IMemoir, to 

 which he especially refers, saying : " I set more store upon perfecting my method, 

 and on wiping out the errors that I may have made, than upon the conceit 

 of preserving my earlier work intact " (VII., p. 36). Thus he made subgenera of 

 Dendritina and Spirolina (Ibid. pp. 58, 62). 



* XV., p. Ivi. I have referred [ante, p. 17) to the multiplication of species 

 brought about by his theory of successive creations. 



'■< Bull. Soc. Geol. France, ser. 2, ii., p. 374. See also Fischer, post, p. 69. 



" Cf. his return to this subject in XI., pp. 8, 9, where he deals with the 

 necessity of zoological knowledge in classifying the fossil MoUusca. 



' XV., pp. xii, XX, xxii, xxvii. D'Orbigny appears to have been the first 

 seriously to criticize Quenstedt's obstinate I'estriction of his views to what he 

 could learn from the Jurassic of Wurtemberg, without comparing his observations 

 with those of any other -authors. Quenstedt's compatriot Von Zittel entirely 

 endorsed d'Orbigny's strictures (XXV., p. 506). 



* XV., pp. xxxviii et seq., xlvi, 1 et seq. This is an elaboration of the 

 principles which he laid down in the " MoUusques vivants et fossiles " in 1845. 

 See XI., pp. 103 et seq. 



