CH. xxiv. DE VELOPMENT OF ANIMALS. 203 



CHAPTER XXV. 



Buffon and Linnaeus compared Buflfon on Natural History Dauben- 

 ton Linnaeus Linnaean or Artificial System Natural System 

 Character and Death of Linnaeus. 



Advance of Natural History Buffon and Linnaeus. 



In the year 1707 two men were born, the one in France 

 and the other in Sweden, whose names have become almost 

 equally well known, although they were by no means equally 

 great. 



The Frenchman, George-Louis Le Clerc Buffon, the son 

 of a counsellor of the parliament of Dijon, was born on his I 

 father's estate in Burgundy. The Swede, Karl Linnaeus, the / 

 grandson of a peasant and son of a poor Swedish clergy- ' 

 man, was born in a small village called Rashult, in the south 

 of Sweden. Buffon enjoyed the best education which 

 France could afford him, with plenty of opportunity to culti- 

 vate his love of natural history. At one-and-twenty he 

 succeeded to a handsome property, and after travelling for 

 some time, settled down to a life of ease and literature, partly 

 in Paris, and partly on his estate in Burgundy. Linnaeus 

 was taught in a small grammar-school, where he showed so 

 little taste for books that his father would have apprenticed 

 him to a shoemaker, if a physician named Rothmann, who 

 saw the boy's love for natural history, had not taken him 

 into his own house and taught him botany and physiology. 

 At one-and-twenty, when Buffon came into his fortune, the 



