BUFFON 379 



able to cross at pleasure from one continent to the 

 other, cannot be characteristic of either — a striking 

 example of speculation without facts ! 



Buffon's information respecting the distribution of 

 animals was of course extremely defective. The voyages 

 of Captain Cook, the founding of the British Empire in 

 India, the occupation of all parts of America by civilised 

 races, the colonisation of Australia, New Zealand, and 

 South Africa, events which have enormously extended 

 geographical and zoological knowledge, were still in the 

 future when these chapters were written (1761 and 1766). 

 The Himalayas were still unexplored, and the AndesV 

 were believed to be the highest mountains on the sur- ) 

 face of the globe. Zoological system was so imperfect 

 that Linnaeus himself had no special orders of elephants, 

 edentates, or marsupials (Systema Natures, 12th ed., 

 1766). Buffon had been strongly inclined to reject 

 genera, families and orders altogether, but this was a 

 freak of his own, which he was now ready to relinquish. 

 He counted some two hundred species of mammals, of 

 which about seventy were found in the New World. 

 No naturalist suspected that the continents are divisible 

 into six or seven distinct zoological regions. It was 

 still possible to maintain that animals spring from the 

 soil ; according to Buffon, the American continent, un- 

 drained and drenched with rain, could not develope the 

 "germes" or **principes actifs" of the larger quadrupeds. 

 There was no science of palaeontology, and only one 

 indubitable example of an extinct animal (the mammoth) 

 could be quoted. 



He is inclined to believe that in the New World nature 

 is less energetic, less varied, and less powerful ; the 

 largest quadrupeds are inferior to the largest of the old 

 world ; man himself is less numerous and less enter- 



