4A STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
1734. There can be no doubt that it was this valuable 
and beautifully written work, full of interesting 
facts, detailed in popular and elegant language, 
that first induced Buffon to adopt a similar style, 
and to clothe natural history in such a dress 
that it should interest the world. That he 
completely succeeded in so doing, by those graces 
of composition and those charms of eloquence 
which he possessed, is notorious to all. These 
qualifications were his own, but they would have 
been altogether useless, at least in this undertaking, 
but for the sound information, the knowledge, and 
the experience of his friend and fellow labourer, 
Daubenton, who supplied the eloquent biographer 
of the animal kingdom with that solid information 
he did not possess, and without which compara- 
tively he could have done nothing. It is unreason- 
able to expect that a man like Buffon should excel 
in such opposite qualities as rigid and laborious 
research, cautious deduction, and flowery eloquence. 
Upon the two first is built every thing valuable in 
pure science; while the latter, however desirable, 
is merely ornamental ;—it may captivate the world, 
but it is rather detrimental than otherwise to the 
advancement of sound knowledge, and the calm 
investigation of truth. Hence it led the vivid and 
excursive fancy of Buffon into wild and _ fanciful 
theories, positive assertions, and palpable blunders. 
And these errors, although clothed with all the 
charms of eloquence, faded away —like the mists 
of a summer morn—before the rays of truth. That 
the writings of this celebrated man promoted, 
indirectly, the extension and the advancement of na- 
