SUPPOSED FLUCTUATIONS OF OPINION. 103 



And again : 



" If we consider each species in the different climates 

 which it inhabits, we shall find perceptible varieties as 

 regards size and form : they all derive an impress to 

 a greater or less extent from the climate in which 

 they live. These changes are only made slowly and im- 

 perceptibly. Nature's great workman is Time. He 

 marches ever with an even pace, and does nothing by 

 leaps and bounds, but by degrees, gradations, and suc- 

 cession he does all things ; and the changes which he 

 works at first imperceptible become little by little 

 perceptible, and show themselves eventually in results 

 about which there can be no mistake. 



" Nevertheless animals in a free, wild state are per- 

 haps less subject than any other living beings, man not 

 excepted, to alterations, changes, and variations of all 

 kinds. Being free to choose their own food and climate, 

 they vary less than domestic animals vary." * The con- 

 ditions of their existence, in fact, remaining practically 

 constant, the animals are no less constant themselves. 



The writer of the above could hardly be claimed as 

 a very thick and thin partisan of immutability, even 

 though he had not shown from the first how clearly 

 he saw that there was no middle position between the 

 denial of all mutability, and the admission that in the 

 course of sufficient time any conceivable amount of 

 mutability is possible. I will give a considerable part of 

 what I have found in the first six volumes of Buffon to 

 bear one way or the other on his views' concerning the 

 mutability of species ; and I think the reader, so far 

 from agreeing with M. Isidore Geoffroy that Buffon 



* Tom. vi. pp. 59-60, 1756. 



