BUFFON. 151 



pletecl iu 1767, extending to no fewer than fifteen 

 different volumes. To these, supplements were after- 

 wards added equal to several more volumes. In the 

 anatomical portion of this work, the author had the 

 assistance of M. D'Aubenton, but in all the other 

 departments Buff on himself displays his learning, 

 genius and eloquence, and he also indulges his fancy in 

 exploring and delineating the whole economy of nature. 

 He begins with a theory of the earth, which, as well 

 as the other planets, he supposes to have been originally 

 a mass of liquefied matter, dashed out of the body of 

 the sun by the violent illapse of a comet. He then 

 covers it with ocean, from which he forms strata by 

 deposition, and mountains by the flux and reflux of 

 the tide. Subterraneous fires, eruptions, and earth- 

 quakes produce other changes, and the world we now 

 inhabit is but the ruins of a former world. In his 

 account of the population of the earth with living 

 creatures, he investigates the analogies between vege- 

 table and animal life, and in explaining the mystery of 

 animal generation, he allows ample range to his imagin- 

 ation in a variety of hypotheses and conjectures. 



Buffon's natural history of animals commences with 

 that of man, whom he traces from the cradle to the 

 grave, through the development and maturation of 

 his bodily organs and mental powers, the nature and 

 operation of his senses, and the several varieties of 

 his species, introducing and intermixing in the 

 research many curious discussions. He then investi- 

 gates the nature of brute animals in general, and 

 marks the distinction between them and man by 



