TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. OF ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY. 355 



was the occasion of that work to which he is indebted for Lis fame, and to perfect 

 which he displayed so much zeal in collecting specimens and in obtaining informa- 

 tion respecting the various kinds of animals with which he became acquainted. 

 His Hist aire Naturelle yenerale et particulib-e began to appear in 1749, and in 

 1767 was published the fifteenth volume, which closed his history of mammals. 

 Herein are contained^ those numerous anatomical illustrations (due, with their 

 accompanying descriptions, to Daubenton) which have been again and again copied 

 down to the present time. Next came nine volumes on birds, then his history of 

 minerals, and, finally, seven supplementary volumes, the last of which appeared 

 in 1789, the year after his death. His life was thus prolonged ten years beyond 

 that of his illustrious contemporary, Linnaeus. 



Buffon can claim no merit as a classifier. With the exception of the Apes of 

 the old and new worlds (which respectively fill the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 volumes of his work), the beasts treated of are hardly arranged on any system, 

 beyond that of beginning with the best known and most familiar— a system 

 necessarily applicable to but a few forms. 



But Buffon deliberately rejected the Linnasan classification— a grave error, 

 certainly, yet one not altogether without excuse. Indeed, some of the objections 

 he brought against that classification have considerable force. Such were his 

 objections to the association of the hippopotamus, the shrew-mouse, and the horse 

 in one order, and of the monkey and the manis in another. 1 What indeed could 

 be more preposterous than the separation of the bat, Noctilio leporinus, from the 

 other bats, and its association with the rodents, on the ground of its having (as 

 supposed) only two incisor teeth above and two below ? — an anomaly of arrange- 

 ment of which you were reminded last year. It scarcely seems possible for the 

 pedantry of classification to go further than this. Yet, perhaps, the association 

 in one group of the walrus, the elephant, the ant-eater, the sloth, and the manatee, 

 was hardly less unphilosophical. Moreover, zoologists should not forget, in 

 blaming Buffon for his want of appreciation of the classification of Linnaeus, that 

 one great portion of that classification— the classification of plants— has been super- 

 seded by us.^ Had he lived to witness the publication of Jussieu's Genera Plan- 

 tarum? it might have given him a. truer insight into biological classification, 

 and have led him to endeavour to improve on Linnaeus' system instead of only 

 criticising it. 



But it is Buffon's speculative views which have most interest for us. Those 

 views exercised a very wide-spread influence in their day, though the time was not 

 ripe for them. Indeed, it is far from improbable that writers whose speculations 

 have been made public at a more propitious season, owe much to their comparatively 

 forgotten predecessor. 



Amongst Buffon's various speculations we might glance at his Theorie de la terre 

 (put forth in the very first volume of his work), and at his Bpoques de la Nature, 

 which fills the fifth volume of his supplement. We might consider his speculations 

 concerning the formation of mountain and valley by water, and the evidence that 

 there was present to the ear of his imagination : — 



' The sound of streams, which, swift or slow, 

 Tear down JSolian hills and sow 

 The dust of continents to be.' 



That he saw, in thought, the projection of the planets from the sun's mass ; the 

 primitive fluidity of the earth, and the secular refrigeration of the sun. Such 

 considerations, however, are foreign to this Section. I will therefore select two 

 which are of biological interest. 



In the first place I may refer to Buffon's speculations concerning animal 

 variation. In this matter Isidore Geoffroy St.-Hilaire has affirmed that Buffon 

 stands to the doctrine of animal variability in a position analogous to that in which 

 Linnseus stands to the doctrine of the fixity of species. 



1 ' Hist. Nat.' tome i. p. 39. 

 - This appeared in 1781). 



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