CHAPTER VIII 



BUFFON 



His Studies and career 



GEORGES Louis Leclerc de Buffon was born in 1707 at Montbard, in 

 Burgundy. His father was councillor of the Burgundian parlement 

 • at Dijon, the capital of the province, and thus belonged to that 

 bureaucratic nobility which was so influential in France in earlier times and 

 which gave to the country many of its finest men, who were often remark- 

 able for their cultural interests and their wealth. Both existed indeed in the 

 home in which young Buffon was brought up; he received a thorough educa- 

 tion in his native city and had good prospects in the career which his family 

 had long followed, when chance turned his footsteps into a different direc- 

 tion. He' made the acquaintance of a young Englishman, Lord Kingston, 

 who was travelling on the Continent accompanied by a tutor who had 

 studied natural science, and travelled with him through France and Italy. 

 During this tour Buffon's interest in nature, which was to be the dominating 

 factor in his life, ripened. He accompanied his friend to England and spent 

 a year in London studying, particularly mathematics, physics, and botany — 

 sciences which were at the height of their development in the country that 

 gave birth to Newton and Ray. Having returned to France, Buffon published 

 a translation of Newton's fluxions, as well as of the English botanist Hales's 

 Vegetable Staticks — two works which presaged the direction that his own 

 activities were to take. As he was wealthy, he was able to devote himself to 

 regular scientific labour, first of all directing his attention to mathematics 

 and physics. In 1739 ^^ '^^^ elected an associate of the French Academy of 

 Sciences and in the same year was appointed "keeper of the Jardin du Roi," 

 a post of some distinction, which was still further enhanced by his activities 

 that resulted in the Jardin du Roi, now the Jardin des Plantes, becoming the 

 centre of biological research in France. In the period that followed, his great 

 gifts proved of benefit both to himself and to the science he had chosen: he 

 succeeded in arousing a general interest for natural science amongst the lead- 

 ing circles in France, so that even the King, Louis XV, who was so indifferent 

 and such a stranger to all ideal interests, granted large sums for the improve- 

 ment of his garden and to assist the scientific work carried out there, while 

 many other eminent personages likewise patronized this science and its dis- 

 tinguished representative. Buffon himself was created a count, was made a 



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