PKOCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 183 



manj old works, such as those to v/hich the President had referred, 

 which there was no longer any need to consult, apart from questions of 

 nomenclature : but among such early studies they often found most 

 remarkable discussions of questions which struck pioneers as difficult, 

 though they were now, perhaps, comparatively understood. In these 

 days of increasing technicality, it added to the interest of scientific 

 writings if they treated their subject in a more or less historical 

 manner, with some reference to the beginnings of the various ideas 

 dealt with. The President, in his most exhaustive address, had provided 

 the Society with an admirable example of the way in which pioneers 

 should be regarded. The speaker had had the privilege, thanks to the 

 President, of reading the whole of the address, and one of the features 

 it brought out was the immense industry of d'Orbiguy — a feature which 

 was noticeable in the work of most pioneers ; the amount of research 

 that they were able to accomplish was astonishing, considering the 

 disadvantageous conditions of the time, and in d'CJrbigny's case con- 

 sidering the added difficulties of his relations to his contemporaries to 

 which the President had referred. Another point of interest in the 

 work of d'Orbigny was his effort to discover the meaning of the facts 

 he observed and recorded. D'Orbigny thought he understood their 

 meaning, and the whole of his researches in his later life were directed 

 towards discovering the truth, or otherwise, of the conclusions to which 

 he had arrived. Some of the theories of d'Orbigny, the speaker thought, 

 were not completely discarded even now ; but even if they were no 

 longer generally held, they certainly enaliled d'Orbigny to piece together 

 his work in a way which would otherwise have been impossible. At any 

 rate, he inaugurated methods which they, with their increased informa- 

 tion, could only adopt with profit. It therefore gave him much 

 pleasure to propose the resolution he had mentioned. 



Mr. A. W. Sheppard said he had much pleasure in seconding 

 Dr. Smith Woodward's proposal. 



Professor W. W. Watts said he was not a student of Foraminifera, 

 but he felt as a geologist that they owed a great deal to men like 

 d'Orbigny, many of whose terms were in use to this day. It was to 

 be hoped that his method of nomenclature would always influence 

 geology ; and although d'Orbigny might have been wrong in many of his 

 notions, he drew strong attention to facts, and the man who did that 

 often accomplished a great deal of good, even if his notions Avere not 

 quite correct. For example, the mere fact that a man held the view that 

 there had been on the earth twenty-six cataclysms was the cause of his 

 marshalling all the evidence he could in favour of it, and that compelled 

 his opponents to bring all the facts they could to bear against it, with 

 the inevitable result of the world in general getting nearer to the truth. 

 He had listened with great interest to the address, and the Society was 

 deeply indebted to the President for the trouble he had taken on the 

 matter. 



The President said the pleasant task devolved upon him of proposing 

 a vote of thanks to the Honorary Officers of the Society. Many of those 

 present had served on the Council of the Society, and therefore knew the 



