64 PERIOD III. 



thirty-six volumes crowded with plates. Havings won 

 for himself a place side by side with Montesquieu and 

 Gibbon, he employed it to direct attention to the larger 

 questions of biology and geology. He was a pro- 

 nounced freethinker, who promulgated bold views with 

 a dexterity which saved him from condemnation by the 

 theological tribunals. When his opinions were declared 

 to be contrary to the teaching of the Church, he printed 

 a conciliatory explanation, but never cancelled the 

 passages objected to, which continued to appear in a 

 succession of editions. His deficiencies, we must admit, 

 were serious. He was a poor observer (partly because 

 of short sight), and had no memory for small details. 

 His enemies were able to taunt him with absurd mistakes, 

 such as that cows shed their horns. He alienated the 

 two foremost naturalists of the eighteenth century, 

 Linnaeus and Reaumur, by ignorant and scornful 

 criticisms. His strong propensity to speculation, in- 

 sufficiently checked by care to verify, might have 

 brought him under the sarcastic remark of Fontenelle, 

 that ignorance is less apparent when it fails to explain 

 what isy than when it undertakes to explain what is not. 



Buffon's fame is not seriously impaired by the fact 

 that his great w^ork is no longer read except by those 

 who study the course of scientific thought. Few 

 productions of the human intellect retain their value 

 after a hundred years, and scientific treatises become 

 obsolete sooner than others. It is consoling to 

 recollect that, if their energy is quickly dissipated, it is 

 at least converted into light. 



In a history of biology Buffon is naturally a more 

 important figure than Montesquieu. Buff"on had im- 

 bibed evolutionary views from the Frotogcsa of Leibnitz, 

 which in turn made use of certain hypotheses of 



