I 



206 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. ^. iii. 



sections and descriptions. The rest of the work was written 

 chiefly by Buffon himself, who bestowed upon it immense 

 pains and labour. He was a very pleasing writer, and did a 

 great deal for natural history by making it popular. His 

 books were more like romances than works of science, but 

 he collected in them a great deal of very useful information, 

 and put it in a shape which everyone could read with 

 pleasure, and in this way led people to think, and to wish to 

 know more about natural history and the habits and lives 

 of animals. He was also the first to trace out with any care 

 the way in which animals are distributed over different parts 

 of the globe; how they are checked by climate, by 

 mountains, by rivers, and by seas from wandering out of 

 their own regions, and how they are more widely spread 

 over cold countries than over warm ones, because they are 

 able to cross the seas and rivers upon solid or floating ice, 

 and so get from one region to another. 



In this general way Buffon gathered together a great 

 many interesting facts about animals. His works were all 

 the more popular because he disliked anything like classi- 

 fication. He would not attempt to group the animals after 

 any particular method, but liked to describe each one with 

 a Httle history of its own, and to wiite on freely without any 

 very great scientific accuracy. Of course the consequence 

 was that he often made great mistakes, and arrived at false 

 conclusions ; still he had so much genius and knowledge 

 that a great part of his work will always remain true, and 

 Natural History owes a great deal to Buffon. He died in 

 1788, in the eighty-first year of his age, and twenty thousand 

 people assembled to do him honour at his funeral. 



Life and Influence of Linnaeus, 1707-1778.— We must 

 now turn to Linnaeus, whose whole life and labours were as 



