BUFFON 373 



in the air, reptiles, amphibians living in both air and 

 water ; cetacean, oviparous and boneless fishes, crus- 

 taceans, shells, land insects, marine insects, freshwater 

 insects, &c. He thinks it absurd to put the domesticated 

 dog into the order FercB^ whose name implies that it 

 consists oi wild animals. It is better to call an ass an 

 ass, and a cat a cat, than to pretend that the ass is a 

 horse and the cat a lynx. 



Had Buffon kept his satire for what was really objec- 

 tionable in the Linnean classification, he would have 

 shown himself a more useful critic. There was fair 

 ground for complaint against any system of Mammalia 

 which put the bats with the monkeys, mixed up the 

 elephant, walrus, manatee, and edentates in one order ; 

 the carnivores, insectivores, and opossums in another. 

 Nor were the Linnean classes and orders of plants less 

 open to reproach. But Bufibn in his wrath condemns 

 the whole without discrimination ; his objections, if they 

 could be maintained, would destroy, not the Linnean 

 arrangement only, but every other scientific arrangement 

 that has been proposed. 



I do not know that Linnaeus ever mentions the name 

 of BuiFon in his treatises. In his fragmentary Auto- 

 biography he says that Bufibn was at last obliged, 

 nolens volens, to arrange the plants in the Jardin du 

 Koi according to the Linnean system. According to 

 De Blainville,^ Bufibn never allowed the Linnean system 

 to show itself in the garden, and only consented to 

 allow the Linnean names to be used on condition that 



^Hist. des Sciences de r Organisation, Vol. II, p. 386n. It apiMam from 

 A. L. de Jussieu's Exposition d'nn nouvd ordre de PlaiUts (AUm. Acad. Sri., 

 1774, p. 177) that the syHtoni of Toumofort wa« rouinotl in tho Janhii du R<« 

 until 1773, when A. L. de JuHMiou's syBtom was auUtitutod, Ixith th« binary 

 nomenclature of Linnwus and the natural familiei of the Juwiouii l>oing then 

 adopted. 



