BD LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
The impression left on the mind, after reading 
Buffon, is that even if he threw out these suggestions 
and then retracted them, from fear of annoyance or 
even persecution from the bigots of his time, he did 
not himself always take them seriously, but rather 
jotted them down as passing thoughts. Certainly he 
did not present them in the formal, forcible, and 
scientific way that Erasmus Darwin did. The result 
is that the tentative views of Buffon, which have to 
be with much research extracted from the forty-four 
volumes of his works, would now be regarded as in a 
degree superficial and valueless. But they appeared 
thirty-four years before Lamarck’s theory, and though 
not epoch-making, they are such as will render the 
name of Buffon memorable for all time. 
ETIENNE GEOFFROY Sie HiEArRE: 
Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire was born at Etampes, 
Aprils; 1772, te diediin Paris in 1ea4. ble was 
destined for the church, but his tastes were for a 
scientific career. His acquaintance with the Abbé 
Hatiy and Daubenton led him to study mineralogy. 
He was the means of liberating Haiiy from a political 
prison; the Abbé, as the result of the events of 
August, 1792, being promptly set free at the request 
of the Academy of Sciences. The young Geoffroy 
was in his turn aided by the illustrious Haiiy, who 
obtained for him the position of sub-guardian and 
demonstrator of mineralogy in the Cabinet of Natural 
History. At the early age of twenty-one years, as 
we have seen, he was elected professor of zoélogy in 
