SUPPOSED FLUCTUATIONS OF OPINION. IQt 



sheep a more delicate kind of goat, that we hava, 

 tended, perfected, and propagated for our use, and that 

 the more perfect animals in general — especially the 

 domestic animals — draw their origin from some less 

 perfect species of that kind of wild animal which they 

 most resemble. Nature alone not being able to do as 

 much as Natv/re and man can do in concert with one 

 another." * 



Bat Buffon had long ago declared that if the horse 

 and the ass could be considered as being blood relations 

 there was no stopping short of the admission that all 

 animals might also be blood relations — that is to say, 

 descended from common ancestors — and now he tells 

 us that the ass and horse are in all probability de- 

 scended from common ancestors. Will a reader of any 

 literary experience hold that so laborious, and yet 

 so witty a writer, and one so studious of artistic effect, 

 could ignore the broad lines he had laid down for 

 himself, or forget how what he had said would bear on 

 subsequent passages, ^nd subsequent passages on it? 

 A less painstaking author than Buffon may yet be 

 trusted to remember his own work well enough to 

 avoid such literary bad workmanship as this. If Buffon 

 had seen reason to change his mind he would have said 

 so, and would have contradicted the inference he had 

 originally pronounced to be deducible from an admission 

 of kinship between the ass and the horse. This, it is 

 hardly necessary to say, he never does, though he 

 frequently thinks it well to remind his reader of the 

 fact that the ass and the horse are in all probability 



• Tom. V. p. 60. 



