DON FELIX d'aZARA. 57 



hand, he was forced to group them into a kind of 

 system. It was under these circumstances that a 

 happy accident put him in possession of the Spanish 

 translation of Buffon, the most celebrated work of 

 the age on the subject, and the first and only one 

 our self-taught naturalist had ever seen. The avi- 

 dity with which he perused its pages may readily be 

 conceived ; and finding in it many deficiencies and 

 inaccuracies, especially in connexion with those re- 

 gions with which he was most familiar, he recast his 

 work afresh, making at the same time such remarks 

 as the examination of Bufibn suggested. Thus his 

 treatise very naturally acquired somewhat of a criti- 

 cal tone ; a circumstance which has given occasion 

 to censure. His own answer, however, appearr 

 abundantly satisfactory. " My strictures are made 

 not so much on the Count de Buffon, as on those 

 travellers and natui-alists from whom he copied the 

 errors I attack. Even were they his own, they 

 would not detract from his merit ; nor ought it to 

 excite astonishment, that a man who wrote with 

 infinite elegance on so many and such extended sub- 

 jects, and who had not the same opportunities which 

 I have had to examine some, should not succeed 

 in all. If it should be found that I have been at all 

 wanting in the respect due to so illustrious a per- 

 sonage, I beg it may be attributed to the love I bear 

 to truth, to my unwdllingness that it should be at all 

 departed from, and to my having written under 

 the influences of melancholy, when it appeared I 

 was destined never to escape from those wild re- 



