EVOLUTIONARY VIEWS OF BUFFON 20I 



effect on Buffon, who maintained that, of the different 

 forms of genesis, " spontaneous generation " is not 

 only the most frequent and the most general, but the 

 most ancient — namely, the primitive and the most 

 universal.* 



Buffon by nature was unsystematic, and he pos- 

 sessed little of the spirit or aim of the true investi- 

 gator. He left no technical papers or memoirs, or 

 what we would call contributions to science. In his 

 history of animals he began with the domestic breeds, 

 and then described those of most general, popular 

 interest, those most known. He knew, as Male- 

 sherbes claimed, little about the works even of Linn6 

 and other systematists, neither grasping their prin- 

 ciples nor apparently caring to know their methods. 

 His single positive addition to zoological science was 

 generalizations on the geographical distribution of 

 animals. He recognized that the animals of the 

 tropical and southern portions of the old and new 

 worlds were entirely unlike, while those of North 

 America and northern Eurasia were in many cases the 

 same. 



We will first bring together, as Flourens and also 

 Butler have done, his scattered fragmentary views, or 

 rather suggestions, on the fixity of species, and then 

 present his thoughts on the mutability of species. 



* Histoire naturelle, gMe'rale et parliculihre. 1st edition. Im- 

 primerie royale. Paris : 1749-1804, 44 vols. 4to. Tome iv., p. 357. 

 This is the best of all the editions of Butfon, says Flourens, from 

 whose Histoire des Travaux et des Iddes de Buffon, ist edition (Paris, 

 1844), we take some of the quotations and references, which, however, 

 we have verified. We have also quoted some passages froifi Buffon 

 translated by Butler in his "Evolution, Old and New" (London, 

 1879). 



