466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



nized only individuals?" (5) Dacque, in what is at many points the 

 least inaccurate of the histories of evolutionism, 5 declares that Buffon 

 brought forward no more profound ideas than his contemporaries " upon 

 the interconnection of the phenomena of organic nature," though he did 

 something to clarify the conception of geological evolution, and 

 "regarded species as variable within certain limits." (6) The writer 

 who (so far as I know) has most recently discussed the subject, 

 Landrieu, 6 seems finally to give up as hopeless the attempt to reduce 

 Buffon's utterances to harmony and coherency. He adds, however, that 

 in spite of these inconsistencies, " Buffon retains the indisputable honor 

 of having been the first zoologist to admit the possibility of specific 

 variations due to environmental influences and extending beyond the 

 limits of species." 



All of these accounts of the matter seem to me to be either inadequate 

 or erroneous, though all may be said in some measure to be founded 

 on fact. Most of them — especially of the more recent ones — wholly 

 ignore two essential considerations in relation to Buffon's biological 

 conceptions, in the light of which all that he wrote must be interpreted. 

 In attempting to present a more adequate and more correct analysis of 

 Buffon's opinions, I shall be obliged to tax the reader's patience with 

 many and lengthy citations. Where there has been so much disagree- 

 ment, it is necessary to present the proofs for nearly every statement 

 propounded. And where so much error has arisen through the citation 

 of brief passages in disregard of their contexts, it is important that 

 pains be taken to quote or summarize so much of each text as appears 

 to be in any way relevant to the question under consideration. 



1. The first volume of the great treatise (1749) opened with a 

 preliminary disquisition on the methodology of the science, a " Discours 

 de la maniere d'etudier et de traiter l'histoire naturelle." In this Buffon 

 gave a salutary emphasis to the demand for a more " philosophical " 

 way of studying botany and zoology than had been exemplified by 

 Linnaeus and Tournefort and the other great systematists. Description 

 and classification, Buffon insisted, were the least part, though a neces- 

 sary part, of " natural history." 



We ought to try to rise to something greater and still more worthy of 

 occupying us — that is to say, to combine observations, to generalize the facts, 



5 "Der Descendenzgedanke u. seine Geschichte," 1903 — a little book less 

 known than it deserves to be. 



6 In his "Lamarck, fondateur de revolution," 1909, pp. 275-283. May I 

 improve this occasion to express the hope that both French and English writers 

 may some day be broken of the habit of talking of ' ' evolution ' ' when they 

 mean ' ' evolutionism ' ' 1 Both languages chance to be provided with a suffix 

 for distinguishing a theory which affirms, or relates to, a given fact from the 

 fact itself; it seems a pity to throw away this instrument of linguistic precision. 

 It is surely absurd (not to say profane) to speak of Lamarck or any other 

 mortal as ' ' the founder of evolution "; or of the eighteenth century as ' ' the 

 beginning of evolution." 



