BUFFON. L53 



been betrayed into a deviation from the limits of 

 simple truth, and has been led to wander into the 

 regions of fancy. In particular and minute obser- 

 vation he excels, and by his indefatigable researches 

 he made a most valuable addition to the treasure of 

 authenticated facts. But at the same time it can- 

 not be disputed that Buffon was occasionally misled 

 by an undue attachment to theory, as well as by the 

 ambition of distinguished eloquence. 



Of what Buffon calls the "method" of his 

 natural history, his own description is so curious, 

 and in a sense "unmethodical' as compared with 

 previous systems, but is yet so full and explicit, that 

 it is a valuable lesson in itself. He imagines a 

 man who, having forgotten all things, wakes up 

 afresh to a sight of the objects which surround 

 him; he places this man in a country where animals, 

 birds, fishes, plants, and minerals are presented 

 successively before him. "Soon," he says, "this 

 man will begin to form a general idea of animated 

 matter; he will easily distinguish it from inanimate 

 matter, and in a very brief space of time he will 

 readily distinguish animated matter from vegetable 

 matter, and will naturally arrive at this first grand 

 division — animal, vegetable, and mineral; and he will 

 also have gained a clear idea of these three great 

 objects, so different from each other — earth, air, and 

 water; he will be enabled in a little time to form 

 a particular idea of the animals which inhabit the 

 earth, of those which exist in the water, and th< 

 which rise into the air, and consequently he will 



