BUFFO N FULLER QUOTATIONS. 143 



for ho has the ass as his near neighbour, and seems 

 himself to le nearly enough related to it; . . . the 

 dog is perhaps of even less noble species, approaching 

 as he does to the wolf, fox, and jackal, ivhich we can 

 only consider to be the degenerated species of a single 

 family " * all which may seem very natural opinions 

 for a French aristocrat in the days before the Revo- 

 lution, but which cannot for a moment be believed to 

 have been Bufibn's own. I have not ascertained the 

 date of Buffon's little quarrel with the Sorbonne, but I 

 cannot doubt that if we knew the inner history of the 

 work we are considering, we should find this passage 

 and others like it explained by the necessity of quieting 

 orthodox adversaries. He concludes the paragraph 

 from which I have just been quoting by saying, " To 

 class man and the ape together, or the lion with the 

 cat, and to say that the lion is a cat with a mane and 

 a long tail this were to degrade and disfigure nature 

 instead of describing her and denominating her species." 

 Buffon very rarely uses italics, but those last given are 

 his, not mine ; could words be better chosen to make us 

 see the lion and the cat as members of the same genus ? 

 No wonder the Sorbonne considered him an infelicitous 

 writer; why could he not have said "cat," and have 

 done with it, instead of giving a couple of sly but telling 

 touches, which make the cat as like a lion as possible, 

 and then telling us that we must not call her one? 

 Sorbonnes never do like people who write in this way. 



" The lion, then, belongs to a most noble species, 

 standing as he does alone, and incapable of being con- 

 * Tom. ix. p. 10, 1761. 



