Alcide d'Orhi(/ni/. 73 



nifera in Chalk/ though d'Orbigny, working independently at the 

 same time, had produced his Paris ]>asin Memoir, and had noted 

 many of the Cretaceous forms in the " Tableau Methodique " in 

 1825.- Unfortunately, Ehrenberg's magnum opus, the " Mikro- 

 geologie," is so vast and confused a work, so difficult of reference, 

 and so discounted by his practice of figuring only species as viewed 

 by transmitted light, as to be practically useless to the systematist ^ 

 (vide ante, p. 56). It was Ehrenberg, also, who first called attention 

 to the presence of glauconitic casts of Foraminifera in the Green- 

 sands that occur from the .Silurian upwards.** 



We need not stop to consider the classification proposed by 

 Schultze in 1854, which left much to be corrected, and that of 

 Bronn in 1859, which was a combination of the systems of 

 d'Orbigny and Schultze. It was, however, Schultze who first 

 — after Dujardin, whose observations he confirmed — made any 

 systematic study of the living animal.^ He recognized the truth 

 of d'Orbigny's axiom, that a few months of what may be called 

 "field-work," properly directed, is worth more than an entire life- 

 time spent consulting compilations in the studio.^ 



I have referred to some of d'Orbigny's unaccountable sins of 

 omission, liis failure for many years to recognize the genus Lagena 

 (ante, p. 52) ' and Bolivina (ante, p. 53 ). That he should have 

 entirely ignored the Foraminiferal nature of Nubecularia is remark- 

 able, for it is one of the commonest of the Mediterranean forms, 

 and must have been present in great quantity in his material, 

 showing the highly distinctive Textularian, Eotalian, and Nodo- 

 sarian arrangements of chambers which are a feature of this 

 protean genus, though Carpenter says ** that his Wchhina ricgosa ^ 

 was referable to Nubecularia, a determination of the correctness of 

 which I am far from being assured. It would be impossible to 



' C. G. Ehrenberg, "Ueber die Bildung der Kreidefelsen und des Kreide- 

 mergels durch i;ns;chtbar Organismeu," Abhandl. k. Akad. Wiss., Berlin (1838), 

 1839, pp. 59-147, pis. i.-iv. 



^ See XXV., pp. 244, 326, 383. Ehrenberg would appear to have been the first 

 to make microscopic examination of thin sections of Foraminifera, but he fell 

 into the error of regarding them as Bryozoa. 



•* " Mikrogeologie : Das Wirken des unsichtbaren Kleinen Lebens auf der 

 Erde," 2 vol., fcl., Leipzig, 1854. Parker and Jones made an heroic effort to make 

 this work available to the student of the Foraminifera in their " Nomenclature," 

 Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, ix. (1872), pp. 211-230, 280-303 ; x. (1872), pp. 184-200, 

 253-271 ; and appendix, pp. 453-457. 



* His first paper on the subject was his "Ueber den Griinsand und seine 

 Erlauterung des organischen Lebens," Abhandl. k. Ak. Wiss. Berlin (1855), 

 pp. 85-176, pi. i.-vii. This was followed by several other papers in the same and 

 following years. (See Sherborn's Bibliography.) 



^ M. S. Schultze, " Ueber den Organismus der Polythalamien (Foramini- 

 feren)," etc., Leipzig, 1854. " XV., p. xv. 



' We must bear in mind in this connexion the imperfections of his earlier 

 microscopes. Even in 1839 he regarded the smallest Foraminifera as measuring 

 "no more than a half, a quarter, or even a sixth of a millimetre " (VII., p. viii). 



>* XVII., p. 69. 



" VIII., pi. i., figs. 16-18; XII., pi. xxi., figs. 11-12. 



