EVOLUTIONARY VIEWS OF BUFFON 203 
beginning with tome iv., appeared in the years 1753 
to 1767, or over a period of fourteen years. Butler, 
in his Evolution, Old and New, effectually disposes 
of Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire’s statement that at the 
beginning of his work (tome iv., 1753) he affirms the 
fixity of species, while from 1761 to 1766 he declares 
for variability. But Butler asserts from his reading 
of the first edition that “ from the very first chapter 
onward he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did 
not openly avow his belief init. . . . The reader 
who turns to Buffon himself will find that the idea 
that Buffon took a less advanced position in his old 
age than he had taken in middle life is also without 
foundation ” * (p. 104). 
But he had more to say on the other side, that of 
the mutability of species, and it is these tentative 
views that his commentators have assumed to have 
been his real sentiments or belief, and for this reason 
place Buffon among the evolutionists, though he had 
little or no idea of evolution in the enlarged and 
thoroughgoing sense of Lamarck. 
He states, however, that the presence of callosities 
on the legs of the camel and llama “are the unmis- 
takable results of rubbing or friction; so also with the 
callosities of baboons and the pouched monkeys, and 
the double soles of man’s feet.’ + In this point he 
anticipates Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck. As we 
shall see, however, his notions were much less firmly 
* Osborn adopts, without warrant we think, Isidore Geoffroy St. Hi- 
laire’s notion, stating that he ‘‘ shows clearly that his opinions marked 
three periods.” The writings of Isidore, the son of Etienne Geoffroy, 
have not the vigor, exactness, or depth of those of his father. 
+t Tome xiv., p. 326 (1766). 
