138 BIOGRAPHIES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 



building was called the "Tour de St Louis," and here 

 Buffon wrote most of his books and memoirs. Jean 

 Jacques Rousseau, before he entered the "Tour," used 

 to fall on his knees and kiss the threshold, stating that 

 its possessor was the greatest zoologist of the age, and 

 a master of style. Prince Henry of Prussia called this 

 building "the cradle of natural history." Here Buffon 

 wrote and worked for fifty years, frequently offending 

 the Church by his evolutionary theories, which he re- 

 tracted in order to please the Sorbonne the Faculty 

 of Theology of the University of Paris. In 1751, when 

 he was forty-four years of age, the Sorbonne condemned 

 him to retract the heresy which he had made in publish- 

 ing these words : " The waters of the sea have produced 

 the mountains and valleys of the land ; the waters of 

 the heavens, reducing all to a level, will at last deliver 

 the whole land over to the sea, and the sea successively 

 prevailing over the land, will leave dry new continents 

 like those which we inhabit." His recantation states 

 that : "I declare that I had no intention to contradict 

 the text of Scripture; that I believe most firmly all 

 therein related about the Creation, both as to order of 

 time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my 

 book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally 

 all which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses." 



The late Mr W. E. Gladstone, writing to Dr J. A. 

 Lahm on the latter' s book, Evolution and Dogma, said : 



