86 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



enough, so the hare shall serve us for the theme of a 

 discourse on the geometrical ratio of increase and the 

 balance of power which may be observed in nature. 

 When we come to the carnivora, additional reflections 

 follow upon the necessity for death, and even for violent 

 death ; this leads to the question whether the creatures 

 that are killed suffer pain ; here, then, will be the proper 

 place for considering the sensations of animals generally. 



Perhaps the most pregnant passage concerning evo- 

 lution is to be found in the preface to the ass, which is 

 so near the beginning of the work as to be only the 

 second animal of which Buffon treats after having de- 

 scribed man himself. It points strongly in the direc- 

 tion of his having believed all animal forms to have 

 been descended from one single common ancestral type. 

 Buffon did not probably choose to take his very first 

 opportunity in order to insist upon matter that should 

 point in this direction ; but the considerations were too 

 important to be deferred long, and are accordingly put 

 forward under cover of the ass, his second animal. 



When we consider the force with which Buffon's 

 conclusion is led up to ; the obviousness of the conclu- 

 sion itself when the premises are once admitted ; the 

 impossibility that such a conclusion should be again 

 lost sight of if the reasonableness of its being drawn 

 had been once admitted ; the position in his scheme 

 which is assigned to it by its propounder ; the persistency 

 with which he demonstrates during forty years there- 

 after that the premises, which he has declared should 

 establish the conclusion in question, are indisputable ; 

 when we consider, too, that we are dealing with a 



