XIO THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



member of the French Academy, and was in many other ways honoured by 

 the great. It was also his fortune to play a brilliant part at a time when bril- 

 liant qualities were valued more than usual. He was of handsome person and 

 stately presence, which was further enhanced by the exquisite care devoted to 

 his dress and outward appearance; he was an excellent stylist and orator, 

 and, although comparatively reticent in society, he knew how to entertain 

 in a manner befitting his social position. Naturally he also had his enemies in 

 the scientific world, who caused him much annoyance both in public and in 

 private. Even the theological faculty in Paris was not satisfied with him, as 

 his views did not seem to be entirely orthodox, and there was once a ques- 

 tion of arraigning him. The distinguished man of the world, however, who 

 naturally had not the least inclination to become a martyr, parried the ac- 

 cusation with a few elegant courtesies about the infallible authority of the 

 Church, and so the matter was allowed to drop. At the same time, in pri- 

 vate letters to trustworthy friends he expressed extremely sceptical opin- 

 ions, which place him in utter contrast to Linnasus, with his childishly 

 naive piety. These two were destined to become antagonists in other spheres 

 also. — Active to the last, BufFon attained an age of over eighty, dying in 

 1788. His only son, whom he desired, but in vain, to become his successor, 

 died by the guillotine during the Revolution. 



His Histoire naturelle 

 At quite an early age BufFon had believed it to be his mission in life to write 

 a general natural history, an account of all the knowledge of nature that 

 could be amassed, and in 1749 the first part of his Histoire nafurelle was pub- 

 lished — a work upon which he was engaged for the rest of his life. In the 

 preparation of this work he associated himself with the eminent anatomist 

 Louis Daubenton (1716-1800), who was for a long time conservator under 

 him and afterwards became a professor at the College de France. He carried 

 out the anatomical and morphological detail-work, while BufFon had the 

 management of the whole and was responsible both for the ideas incorpo- 

 rated in it and for the method of presentation. The original edition comprised 

 fifteen volumes, the first of which dealt with general natural science, and the 

 remainder with man, the mammalians, and the birds. BufFon got no further 

 in the sphere of biology. In some supplementary volumes, which came out 

 later, a number of general natural-scientific questions were discussed, includ- 

 ing mineralogy, a science on which BufFon was weakest, as he was no chem- 

 ist. Later on, several editions of the great work were published — a proof of 

 how popular it was, in spite of its expense. The main reason for this was 

 undoubtedly BufFon's brilliant style. Not only did he produce vivid descrip- 

 tions of the nature and habits of animals, the like of which had never been 

 read before and seldom have been equalled since, but he also succeeded in 

 dealing with the most difficult physical and cosmological problems in a 



