156 EMINENT NATURALISTS. 



volumes were the joint production of both writers, and 

 each author prefixed his name to his own articles. The 

 three remaining volumes were written by Buffon himself, 

 with the assistance of the Abbe Bexon, who formed the 

 nomenclature, drew up most of the descriptions, and 

 communicated several important hints. 



It was in the preparation of this that Buffon's pecu- 

 liar system of method which he pursued in the first 

 portion of his work, and of which we have already 

 spoken, began to undergo a change. As he advanced with 

 his work, he conformed himself more and more to the 

 ideas, and by the ideas to the language, of the natural- 

 ists. He felt more and more the necessity of ranging 

 objects according to their affinities, and as Cuvier has 

 well remarked, " On reaching his history of birds, he 

 tacitly submitted himself to the necessity under which 

 we all are, of classifying our ideas in order to our 

 obtaining a clear representative of the whole." 



We may add that he did not wait till then. When, 

 after having described one after the other, and without 

 any methodical aim, the horse, ass, ox, sheep, goat, pig, 

 dog, cat, in fact all the domestic animals, he proceeds 

 to the wild animals, more than once, and evidently de- 

 signedly so, he places together kindred species. For 

 instance, he places deer near the roebuck, the polecat 

 near the marten. On coming to the monkeys he places 

 them all together, and even distributes them by distinct 

 groups according to very good characters. But it 

 certainly is above all in his " History of Birds," that, as 

 Cuvier remarks, his march becomes really and scientific- 

 ally methodical. 



