EVOLUTIONARY VIEWS OF BUFFON MEN 
of direct creation, and that the first pair of every 
species issued fully formed from the hands of the 
Greator ’ (tome iv.).p. 383). 
In which of these views did Buffon really believe ? 
Yet they appear in the same volume, and not at dif- 
ferent periods of his life. 
He actually does say in the same volume (iv., p. 
358): “It is not impossible that all species may be 
derivations (essues).” In the same volume also (p. 
215) he remarks: 
‘‘There is in nature a general prototype in each 
species on which each individual is modelled, but 
which seems, in being realized, to change or become 
perfected by circumstances ; so that, relative sly to cer- 
tain qualities, there is a singular (bizarre) variation 
in appearance in the succession of individuals, and at 
the same time a constancy in the entire species which 
appears to be admirable.” 
And yet we find him saying at the same period of 
his life, in the previous volume, that species “are the 
only beings in nature, beings perpetual, as ancient, as 
permanent as she.’”’* A few pages farther on in the 
same volume of the same work, apparently written at 
the same time, he is strongly and stoutly anti-evolu- 
tional, affirming: “The imprint of each species isa 
type whose principal features are graven in characters 
forever ineffaceable and permanent.”} — 
In this volume (iv., p. 55) he remarks that the 
senses, whether in man or in animals, may be greatly 
developed by exercise. 
* Tome xiii., p. i. + Tome xiii., p. ix. 
