BUFFON 365 



when Cuvier was to raise the Jardin and the Museum to 

 the height of their renown. 



PLAN OF THE EISTOIRE NATURELLE 



A man of great ambition, practised in literary work 

 and conscious of literary gifts, but deficient in the 

 ordinary acquirements of the working naturalist, was 

 beyond all others the one to signalise his reign at the 

 Jardin du Eoi by some great literary enterprise. Short 

 sight and a memory which did not long retain minutiae 

 made it impossible for Bujffon to study natural history 

 as Eay, Linnaeus and Rdaumur had studied it. " J'ai la 

 vue courte," he said, " j'ai appris trois fois la botanique, 

 et je I'ai oubli^e de m^me." System he looked down 

 upon, at least when he began his labours, as a mere 

 matter of words. We all know what a dog is ; why 

 should Linnaeus persuade us to call it Canis familiaris ? 



Buffon was forty-two when the first volumes of the 

 Histoire Naturelle appeared (1749), and had already 

 spent ten years upon his preparations for the work. 



DAUBENTON AND OTHER HELPEES 



He was glad to reinforce his theories and descriptions 

 by the systematic knowledge of a professed anatomist, 

 and found the collaborator whom he needed in Louis 

 Daubenton, a young doctor of Montbard (1716-1799). 

 For the early volumes of the Histoire Naturelle 

 Daubenton dissected and described nearly two hundred 

 mammals, but after the completion of the fifteen 

 volumes assigned to the quadrupeds he wrote no more. 

 A popular edition was put forth in which Daubenton's 

 contributions were omitted ; Daubenton took this as a 

 slight, and withdrew. He served for many years as 

 keeper of the cabinet of Natural History at the Jardin 



