EVOLUTIONARY VIEWS OF BUFFON 207 
characters. This, however, should not prevent our 
classifying them as different species now, for the 
difference is no less real though it dates from the 
creation. Nature, [ maintain, is in a state of con- 
tinual flux and movement. It ts enough for man if he 
can grasp her as she ts in his own time, and throw but 
a glance or two upon the past and future, so as to try 
and percetve what she may have been in former times 
and what one day she may attain to.” * 
Buffon thus suggests the principle of the struggle 
for existence to prevent overcrowding, resulting in the 
maintenance of the balance of nature: 
“It may be said that the movement of Nature 
turns upon two immovable pivots—one, the illimit- 
able fecundity which she has given to all species; 
the other, the innumerable difficulties which reduce 
the results of that fecundity, and leave throughout 
time nearly the same quantity of individuals in every 
species; . . . destruction and sterility follow closely 
upon excessive fecundity, and, independently of the 
contagion which follows inevitably upon overcrowd- 
ing, each species has its own special sources of death 
and destruction, which are of themselves sufficient to 
compensate for excess in any past generation.” + 
Ie also adds.“ The species the- least, periect. the 
most delicate, the most unwieldy, the least active, 
the most unarmed, etc., have already disappeared or 
will disappear.” t 
On one occasion, in writing on the dog, he antici- 
pates Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck in ascribing to 
the direct cause of modification the inner feelings of 
* Tome ix:p. 127,,.0700 (ex Butler): 
t Tome vi., p. 252, 1756 (quoted from Butler, 7. c., pp. 123-126). 
+ Quoted from Osborn, who takes it from De Lanessan. 
