BUFFON. 147 



ships led him at last to England, and he went to 

 Thoresby, the seat of Lord Kingston, and remained 

 in the country for some months. 



Buffon had a very fine person, liked a little 

 " show," and the rather solemn and stilted manners 

 of the British nobility pleased him. It was this 

 stay in England, and his friendships, that gave 

 Buffon some of the manners of the aristocracy 

 of the day, so that Hume said of him that he 

 resembled a marshal of France more than a man 

 of letters. These habits, amongst which courtesy 

 and true gentility — that is to say, treating other 

 people as we would they should treat us in society —  

 were predominant, clung to Buffon ; and even 

 when at home, and at his very hard and incessant 

 labour in natural history, he kept up his state, and 

 was the great French noble as well as the humble 

 student of nature. 



It is a curious fact, but one very readily ex- 

 plained, that Buffon, like nearly all the great 

 zoologists, began his scientific life as a botanist. 

 Plants are ever at hand, and their classification, 

 good or bad, is readily learned. One of his first 

 works, presented after receiving the honour of 

 election to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, was 

 on a question of the influence of barking trees ; and 

 others were on agriculture. He gave a proof that 

 he was acquainted with the human frame, for he 

 wrote on the causes of squinting. 



Scientific men of nobility were rare in France in 

 those days, and Buffon was appointed keeper to 



