BUFFON AND THE PROBLEM OF SPECIES 471 



had had before his mind so momentous a new idea as that of evolution, 

 he should not have contrived to give a far plainer intimation of it than 

 a single vague remark that imperceptible gradations are found not 

 only in the forms but also in the generations and the successions of 

 every species. At this time, at all events — whatever he may have been 

 later — Buffon was fairly outspoken in the expression of even hetero- 

 dox hypotheses; it was only subsequently that he was condemned by 

 the Sorbonne, on account of opinions propounded in his " Theorie de 

 la Terre," contained in the same volume as the preliminary discourse. 

 It is significant, moreover, that at this date he saw no hint of any 

 evolutionary significance in the homologies of the vertebrate skeleton; 

 he had as yet learned nothing from comparative anatomy. This is 

 shown in the argument by which he defends his own method of 

 arranging species — a method which wholly ignored anatomical con- 

 siderations and merely proceeded from the more familiar to the less 

 familiar animals. 



Is it not better to make the dog, which is fissiped, follow (as he does in 

 fact) the horse, which is soliped, rather than have the horse followed by the 

 zebra, which perhaps has nothing in common with the horse except that it is 

 soliped? . . . Does a lion, because it is fissiped, resemble a rat, which is also 

 fissiped, more closely than a horse resembles a dog? 15 



It is probable, then, that in writing the opening discourse of his 

 great work Buffon was innocent of any idea of organic evolution; it is 

 certain that he did not convey that idea in any such way that a reader 

 of his time might be expected to recognize it. Nor did he make any 

 use of the conception of the descent of species in his " Theorie de la 

 Terre," of the same date — where he might naturally have been expected 

 to introduce the doctrine, if he held it; on the contrary he implies (p. 

 197) the equal antiquity of all species — though he does so in a way 

 which, I confess, might plausibly be taken as ironical. The truth is that 

 when under the influence of the principle of continuity Buffon's mind 

 overshot the problem of the origin of species altogether. There were no 

 such things as species : upon this point he was clear. There was there- 

 fore no need of explaining their genesis. As for the further question, 

 how successive generations of offspring are related in form to their fore- 

 bears, that was a question upon which the principle of continuity had, 

 strictly speaking, nothing to say. That offspring varied somewhat, 

 and usually slightly, from their parents every one knew; to this extent 

 the conformity of the laws of heredity to the law of continuity was a 

 common-place of every-day observation. Beyond this, no definite 

 genetic or embryological consequences seemed necessarily to follow 

 from the maxim natura non facit saltus. 



The most important thing, however, to remark concerning Buffon's 

 position in his first volume is that it is a position which he speedily 



15 "Hist. Nat.," Vol. L, p. 36. 



