98 President'* Address. 



with merely causing- to be published this unparalleled set of 

 plates. He seems to have regarded the work just named as 

 a necessary precursor to his own labours in Ornithology. His 

 * Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière,'' was begun in 

 1749, and in 1770 he brought out, with the assistance of 

 Guénau de Montbeillard, 1 the first volume of that grand 

 undertaking relating to birds, which, for the first time, 

 became the theme of one who possessed real literary capacity. 

 It is not too much to say that Biiffon's florid fancy revelled in 

 such a subject as was that on which he now exercised his 

 brilliant pen ; but it would be unjust to examine too closely 

 what, to many of his contemporaries, seemed sound philo- 

 sophical reasoning, under the light that has since burst upon 

 us. ... He, too, was the first man who formed any 

 theory that may be called reasonable of the Geographical 

 Distribution of Animals, though this theory was scarcely 

 touched in the ornithological portion of his work, and has 

 since proved to be not in accordance with facts. He pro- 

 claimed the variability of species, in opposition to the views 

 of Linnseus as to their fixity, and, moreover, supposed that 

 this variability arose in part by degradation. " 



" Taking his labour's as a whole, there cannot be a doubt 

 that he enormously enlarged the purview of naturalists, and, 

 even if limited to birds, that, on the completion of his work 

 upon them in 1783, Ornithology stood in a very different 

 position from that which it had before occupied." 



This description of Buffon's work and influence I have 

 quoted from Professor Newton in extenso, because I think it 

 gives such an excellent idea of the state of Ornithology 

 towards the end of the eighteenth century, and of the 

 important part played by France in the development of our 

 knowledge of the Class Aves at that epoch. The full history 

 of the science and its development must be sought for in 

 Professor Newton's ' Dictionary,' being somewhat beyond 

 the scope of my present address, which 1 am restricting more 

 to a history of the rise and progress of the British Museum 

 and its collection of birds. 



1 lie retired on the completion of the sixth volume, and thereupon Buffon 

 associated Bexon with himself. — A.N. 



