90 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



horse, and that the one may only differ from the other 

 through degeneration from a common ancestor, we 

 might be driven to admit that the ape is of the family 

 of man, that he is but a degenerate man, and that he 

 and man have had a common ancestor, even as the ass 

 and horse have had. It would follow then that every 

 family, whether animal or vegetable, had sprung from a 

 single stock, which after a succession of generations, had 

 become higher in the case of some of its descendants 

 and lower in that of others." 



What inference could be more aptly drawn ? But it 

 was not one which Buffon was going to put before the 

 general public. He had said enough for the discerning, 

 and continues with what is intended to make the con- 

 clusions they should draw even plainer to them, while 

 it conceals them still more carefully from the general 

 reader. 



" The naturalists who are so ready to establish fami- 

 lies among animals and vegetables, do not seem to have 

 sufficiently considered the consequences which should 

 follow from their premises, for these would limit direct 

 creation to as small a number of forms as anyone 

 might think fit (reduisoient le produit immediat de la 

 creation, a un nombre d'individus aussi petit que Ton 

 voudroit). For if it were once shown that we had right 

 grounds for establishing these families ; if the point were 

 once gained that among animals and vegetables there 

 had been, I do not say several species, but even a single 

 one, which had been produced in the course of direct descent 

 from another species ; if for example it could be once 

 shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the horse 



