BUFFON FULLER QUOTATIONS. 149 



tive modification in every other part, and it is from 

 this cause that our domestic animals differ almost as 

 much in nature and instinct, as in form, from those 

 from which they originally sprung." * 



Buffon confirms this last assertion by quoting the 

 sheep as an example an animal which can now no 

 longer exist in a wild state. Then returning to cattle, 

 he repeats that many varieties have been formed by the 

 effects "diverse in themselves, and diverse in their 

 combinations of climate, food, and treatment, whether 

 under domestication or in their wild state." These are 

 the main causes of variation (" causes generates de 

 variete "),t among our domesticated animals, but by far 

 the greatest is changed climate in consequence of their 

 accompanying man in his migrations. The effects of 

 the foregoing causes of modification, especially the last 

 of them, are repeatedly insisted on in the course of the 

 forty pages which complete the preliminary account of 

 the buffalo. 



What holds good for the buffalo does so also for the 

 mouflon or wild sheep. This, Buffon declares to be the 

 source of all our domesticated breeds : of these there 

 are in all some four or five, " all of them being but de- 

 generations from a single stock, produced by man's 

 agency, and propagated for his convenience." \ At the 

 same time that man has protected them he has hunted 

 out the original race which was " less useful to him," 

 so that it is now to be found only in a few secluded spots, 

 such as the mountains of Greece, Cyprus, and Sardinia. 



* Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754). 



t Ibid. p. 296. J Ibid. p. 363. Ibid. p. 363. 



