74 Transactions of tlie Society. 



point out within the scope of this work the numberless misplaced 

 affinities arising from the d'Orbignyan system of classitication. 

 Carpenter never spares him, and, whilst rendering thus a great 

 service to Ehizopodists, he is, in my opinion, too insistent in his 

 scorn of d'Orbigny, the fundamental error having once been clearly 

 established. The infinitesimal variations from type which he 

 admitted as of sufficient importance to deserve specific rank have 

 been referred to, but it is rather staggering, regard being had to 

 his immense number of shadowy species of Miliolida-, to find him 

 saying that " We should find it difficult to find genera more distinct 

 from one another than those of this order. They present forms so 

 clearly differentiated that there are really no passage forms among 

 them, and a few hours' study will always be sufficient to enable us to 

 distinguish between them." ^ The forms, in point of fact, graduate 

 into one another so insensibly that it is very difficult to draw any 

 sharp lines of demarcation between them.- Only a working 

 systematist can appreciate the wild luxuriousness of his imagina- 

 tion when dealing with the Eotalhie forms, of which Brady has 

 justly said, " most of his species are quite worthless, some of them 

 not even representing varietal distinctions of sufficient permanence 

 to notice." ^ 



No doubt some of d'Orbiguy's critics regarded him as a lunatic, 

 doubtless he was a lover, and most certainly he was a poet, and 

 one is tempted to quote Theseus in the " Midsummer's Night's 

 Dream," and to think that sometimes "his eye in a fine frenzy 

 rolling " gave to airy nothings " a local habitation and a name." 

 It is curious also that d'Orbigny should not have expressed more 

 correct views upon the genus Amphistegina (which does not seem 

 to have arrested the attention of any previous observer), for, as I 

 have pointed out {ante, p. 11), the material at his disposal was 

 practically unlimited, most of the little bottles at La Rochelle con- 

 taining pure gatlierings of this genus, presenting all its variations 

 of form. His description was, as Carpenter says, taken upon trust 

 by all his followers, and its true nature was not revealed until 

 Williamson discussed its minutest structure in 1861.* It is 

 perhaps unfair to take d'Orbigny to task for his superficial errors 

 in dealing with the Nummulites ; as we have seen {a7ite, p. 19) he 

 was afraid of them, and 1 cannot help remarking that this is an 

 attitude which appears to have been adopted by many eminent 

 Geologists and Ehizopodists since his day. 



» XII., p. 25G. 



- See especially W. K. Parker's paper, " On the ]\Iiliolitidfe of the East Indian 

 Seas," Trans. Micr. Soc, London, n.s., vi. (1858), pp. 53-59, pi. v. 



' H. B. Brady, " On the Rhizopodal Fauna of the Shetlands," Trans. Linn. 

 Soc. London (Zool.) xxiv. (1864), p. 469. 



■* W. C. Williamson, " On the Minute Structure of the Calcareous Shells of 

 some recent Species of Foramiuifera," Trans. Micr. Soc, London, iii. (1851), 

 pp. 105-128, pis. xvii., xviii. 



