SECTION IX. BUFFON 



GEORGES LOUIS LECLERC, COMTE DE BUFFON 



1707 1-1788 



Histoire Naturelle, generale et particuli^re, avec la description du Cabinet du 

 Roi. 44 vols. 4to. Paris, 1749-1804. The last eight vols, were posthumous. 



BuFFON was born at Montbard, near Dijon, in the 

 same year with Linnaeus, and educated at the Jesuit 

 college of Dijon. As a youth of nineteen he travelled 

 in France and Italy, in the company of the young 

 Duke of Kingston and his tutor, who had struck up 

 an acquaintance with him during a stay at Dijon. At 

 the age of twenty-five he came into the enjoyment of 

 his mother's fortune, and from that time made it a rule 

 to divide his time between Montbard and Paris. He 

 became known to the members of the Academic des 

 Sciences as a mathematician and as the translator of 

 Hales' Vegetable Staticks (1735) and Newton's Fluxions 

 (1740). To the same early period (1732-1749) belong 



1 The following coincidences and successions will help the memory of his- 

 torical students : — 



Linnaeus and Buffon were bom within four months of each other (1707). 



Linnaeus, Bernard de Jussieu, Haller, Voltaire and Rousseau died within 

 eight months of each other (Nov. 1777-July, 1778). 



The year of Bacon's death was that of Boyle's birth ("Sol oooubuit, nox 

 nulla secuta est"), and the year of Galileo's death that of Newton's birth. 

 Napoleon, Wellington, Cuvier and Humboldt were all lK)rn in 1769. 



Harvey was the pupil of Fabrioius, Fabrioius of Fallopius, Fallopius of 

 VesaliuB. 



