506 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 



a wide circulation among non-professional classes, and created 

 a popular interest in fossil remains. Numerous collectors and 

 dilettantes read their " Quenstedt " over and over again, and 

 tried to apply the same methods of arrangement to their 

 particular collections. And the farmers of the neighbourhood 

 were so well trained by Quenstedt not to overlook any of the 

 fossil riches that might happen to be exposed in the course of 

 field-cultivation, they became quite proficient in identifying the 

 fossils and in recognising the individual zones by Quenstedt's 

 designations. 



Quenstedt gave little heed to the rights of priority, and on 

 account of his neglect of the formal rules in palaeontological 

 science came into conflict with D'Orbigny. Neither did Quen- 

 stedt care to institute a close parallelism between the English 

 and French Jurassic formations and those in Wurtemberg; he 

 merely indicated the correspondence of the main sub-divisions 

 in Wiirtemberg with similar groups in the adjacent areas, and 

 on principle refused to use the English terminology for the 

 sequence of zones which he had established for the Swabian 

 Jurassic system. 



A much broader standpoint of palaeontological investigation 

 was assumed by the far-travelled Alcide d'Orbigny. 1 His great 

 desire was to establish a universal stratigraphy upon the chrono- 

 logical basis supplied by palaeontology. Not only in all parts of 

 France, but also in the other countries of Europe and in North 

 and South America, D'Orbigny thought the same sequence of 

 fossil remains could be identified, and he argued that the age 

 limits of the formations (Terrains) and stages of deposit could 

 be determined over the whole surface of the earth by the 

 universal occurrence of the same leading palaeontological 

 features. 



According to D'Orbigny, each stage of deposit possesses its 



1 Alcide Dessaline d'Orbigny, born on the 6th September 1802, at 

 Couezon (Loire Inferieure), received his early education in La Rochelle, 

 and devoted himself very early to zoological and palreontological studies. 

 In 1826 he was sent to South America by the Museum in Paris, and 

 brought back with him splendid collections of zoological, geological, 

 geographical, ethnographical, historical, and archaeological interest. The 

 results of this journey were afterwards published in a comprehensive work. 

 His later works deal with palseontological and stratigraphical subjects. 

 In 1853 D'Orbigny was appointed Professor of Palaeontology at the 

 Museum in Paris, the Professorship being established especially for 

 him; died on the 3Oth June 1857, at Pierresitte near Saint Denis. 



