PREFACE. Be 
nights. Buffon himself, to whom such catalogues owe their chief reputation, was 
more properly the historian of a few natural objects, than the ‘‘ Historian of Nature.” 
This, perhaps, to the generality of readers, will appear a bold assertion, when directed 
against a man so celebrated ; and may indeed startle any person who has been accus- 
tomed to allow the following parallel to be correctly drawn.  Linneus saisissoit avec 
Jinesse les traits distinctifs des étres ; Buffon embrassoit d’un coup d’eil les rapports les 
plus éloignés.’ But I confess that the truth of this distinction, so indisputable in the 
eyes of French naturalists, has never yet been apparent to me; and so far from attri- 
buting general views of the plan of creation to Buffon, in preference to Linneus, | 
do not conceive that the mode in which he studied Natural History, could ever have 
led him beyond a well-written “ Animal Biography.” It is not indeed asserted, that 
Buffon was destitute of general notions on the creation; for this with a man of 
genius, looking at so divine a work, was impossible: still less is it asserted that he 
was deficient in the powers of generalizing; but what I mean is, that his ideas of 
nature were from the foundation wrong, his mode of studying her works errone- 
ous, and his general conclusions, therefore, almost always false. For the truth of 
my position, I have only to refer to those parts of his works that touch on what 
is truly the science of Natural History: as for instance, to take one of the most 
profound of them, his account of birds that have not the power of flying. All 
that can be said in favour of the above distinction, is, that if Buffon had an 
eye for seizing any relations of affinity, they were indeed ‘“ les plus éloignés.”’ 
Leaving, therefore, such a plan as his to those inventive imaginations, those crude 
theories, and that pompous flowery style, which can alone give it any peculiar interest, 
the modern writers of Faune or Flore, have invariably been obliged to resort to 
systematic descriptive catalogues. All of these however may, I conceive, be reduced 
to two kinds—those which are founded on artificial systems, and those which are 
grounded, not on any particular artificial system, but on the endeavour to disco- 
ver the natural system. Of the first kind, that is, of those which are drawn up 
according to the pre-conceived importance of some one or two particular organs, 
is the justly celebrated Systema Nature of Linnzeus. 
We have seen that by such a plan as that of Buffon, it would be impossible to 
make known the forms of every insect, shell, or moss, that may occur in distant coun- 
tries, and recourse is therefore had to a systematic catalogue waich, by reterring to the 
arrangement of some classical work, such as the ‘Systema Nature,” or the “ Regne 
Animal,” enables the traveller at onee to give a name to the object he describes, and 
the reader to know it by that name. ‘The advantage of such a descriptive catalogue 
is, that to scientific characters and technical descriptions, written with the precision 
of Linneeus, may thus be subjoined the histories ef the rarest animals, written with the 
eloquence 
