Xl PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE 



Daubenton, one of the first comparative ana- 

 tomists of his time. Daubenton, however, 

 was very inferior to his friend in the graces of 

 eloquence and in philosophical expansion of 

 mind. His style of writing was neither re- 

 markable for elegance or perspicuity, still his 

 assistance was of the utmost value from his 

 profound practical knowledge and deep scien- 

 tific research. 



On the whole one may pronounce the work 

 of BufFon, with all its faults, to be one of the 

 most valuable accessions that Natural History 

 ever received. It contains such a picture of 

 nature as was never given before or since by 

 the pen of any individual : independently too, 

 of the actual merit of his book, BufFon had 

 the happiness of bringing the cultivation of the 

 science more generally into fashion than it ever 

 was before. Under his auspices, it took a higher 

 flight than ever, and the minds of his country- 

 men received a universal bent towards this 

 study. There can be no doubt, that the perfec- 

 tion to which Natural History generally, and 

 Zoology in particular, have arrived in France, 

 is to be mainly attributed to the labours of this 

 illustrious writer. 



To notice, even superficially, all the writers 

 on Zoology, contemporary with and subse- 



