Alcide d'Orhigiijj. 69 



1S56)/ He failed, however, as we have seen, to secure admission 

 to this august body. Professor Marcellin Boule says rightly that 

 it was a disgrace to the Institut that he was not elected, and his 

 biographer, in the Encyclopiedia of Larousse, observes that his 

 important works clearly designated him for this honour. He was 

 several times President of the Geological Society of Prance. In 

 1849, on the title-page of the " Cours Elementaire," lie described 

 himself as " Professeur suppleant de Geologie a la Faculte des 

 Sciences de Paris." He had for some years applied in various 

 directions for a Professorship, but these efforts also proved 

 abortive until 1853, when Xapoleon III. founded a Chair of 

 Palaeontology at the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, and d'Orbigny 

 was elected to it as first Professor. Fischer has admirably summed 

 up the record of these last years. He says : " The Zoologists did 

 not ap] )reciate his original discoveries with regard to the geographical 

 distribution of animals, any more than his efforts to establish the 

 Classification of the Foraminifera, the Bryozoa, or the Cephalopoda ; 

 they attached no importance to such painstaking labours of 

 specification and taxonomy ; the Cxeologists were exasperated by 

 the ideas of this innovator ; his terminology of the zones evoked 

 a chorus of recrimination and ridicule ; in a word, Zoologists and 

 Geologists agreed in a remarkable manner in declaring that 

 Palaeontology was not a Science, l3ut merely the Zoology or Botany 

 of fossil creatures." After his election to the ( liair of Palaeon- 

 tology, " it might have been supposed that thenceforward the new 

 Professor would enjoy peacefully the position which he regarded 

 as the supreme object of his career. But this was not the case. 

 Weary of tlie struggle, harassed by mean enmities or by ill- 

 concealed jealousies, he sought in hard work an access of fatigue 

 to obliterate the wounds which were not spared him, and which 

 perhaps he felt too deeply. He shut himself up more assiduously 

 in the midst of his beloved collections ; but this kind of life ended 

 by undermining his robust health, a disease of the heart super- 

 vened with all its train of suffering and anxiety. Ere long work 

 became impossible for him, and after a year of suffering, death 

 brought him deliverance on the oOth June, 1857, at the compara- 

 tively early age of fifty-five."- Professor Boule tells us, "in spite 



1 This is the title and date as given by Fischer (VII., p. 453). It is doubtless 

 a revision and enlargement of a quarto' pamphlet of 28 pp., entitled, " Notice 

 Analytique sur les Travaux de ^l. Alcide d'Orbigny, Auteur du Voyage dans 

 rAm6rique M^ridionale." Paris, n.d. Imp. F. Loquin, 16 Rue Notre Dame des 

 Victoires. It is a catalogue raisonnd of his papers as given by Fischer down to 

 the paper on American swallows (Comptes Rendus, Ac. Sci., vii. (1838), read 

 December, 1837). This would appear to fix the date of this issue of the opuscnlum 

 as 1838, which is that of his first candidature. 



- XXL, p. 450. This account is repeated practically verbatim by Labonnefon, 

 who adds, " He died as he had lived, a Christian " (XXII., p. 14). After the death 

 of d'Orbigny the Chair remained vacant till 1861, when the Vicomte d'Archaic 



