VIEWS OF BUFFON. 367 



more ; that of the insects still more, and if we descend to the 

 plants, which we must not exclude from animated nature, we 

 shall be surprised at the promptitude with which the species 

 vary, and at the facility with which they change their nature 

 while taking on new forms. 



" It would not be impossible then, that, even without reversing 

 the order of Nature, all these animals of the new world may have 

 been originally the same as those of the old, from which they 

 may have been formerly derived ; one might say that having 

 been separated subsequently by immense seas or impassable 

 lands, they would, in the course of time, have received all the 

 impressions, suffered all the effects, of a climate itself altered in 

 character by the same causes which brought about the separa- 

 tion ; that in consequence they would in time have become 

 dwarfed, changed their nature, &c. But that should not prevent 

 us from regarding them to-day as animals of different species : 

 whatever may be the cause of this difference, whether it has been 

 produced by time, climate and country, or whether it be of the 

 same date as the creation, it is none the less real. Nature, I 

 admit, is in a continual state of flux ; but it is enough for man 

 to seize her as she is in his own time, and to glance backwards 

 and forwards in endeavouring to gain some glimpse of what she 

 may have been in former times and of what she may become in 

 the future." l 



This passage also seems to be a sufficiently clear declaration 

 in favour of the theory of organic evolution and the action of 

 the environment in modifying species. Buffon, however, by no 

 means confined himself to the consideration of climate as a 

 factor in the production of such modifications. The following 

 quotation shows that he also realized the importance of the 

 principles of use and disuse and the inheritance of acquired 

 characters, which were destined to take such a prominent place 

 in the subsequent writings of Lamarck : 



" The llama, which, like the camel, passes its life in bearing 

 burdens and only rests by lying down upon its breast, has similar 

 callosities which are perpetuated in the same way by generation. 

 The baboons and the apes, whose most usual attitude, whether 

 awake or asleep, is sitting, have also callosities beneath the region 

 of the buttocks, and this callous skin has even become adherent 

 to the bones against which it is continually pressed by the weight 

 of the body ; but these callosities of the baboons and apes are dry 

 and healthy, because they do not arise from the constraint of 

 trammels or of the weight of a foreign burden, and because they 



1 Op. clt., Tom. IX, pp. 126, 127. 



