EVOLUTIONARY VIEWS OF BUFFO N 



203 



beginning with tome iv., appeared in the years 1753 

 to 1767, or over a period of fourteen years. Butler, 

 in his Evolution, Old and New, effectually disposes 

 of Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's statement that at the 

 beginning of his work (tome iv., 1753) he affirms the 

 fixity of species, while from 1761 to 1766 he declares 

 for variability. But Butler asserts from his reading 

 of the first edition that " from the very first chapter 

 onward he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did 

 not openly avow his beUef in it. . . . The reader 

 who turns to Buffon himself will find that the idea 

 that Buffon took a less advanced position in his old 

 age than he had taken in middle life is also without 

 foundation " * (p. 104). 



But he had more to say on the other side, that of 

 the mutability of species, and it is these tentative 

 views that his commentators have assumed to have 

 been his real sentiments or belief, and for this reason 

 place Buffon among the evolutionists, though he had 

 little or no idea of evolution in the enlarged and 

 thoroughgoing sense of Lamarck. 



He states, however, that the presence of callosities 

 on the legs of the camel and llama " are the unmis- 

 takable results of rubbing or friction ; so also with the 

 callosities of baboons and the pouched monkeys, and 

 the double soles of man's feet." f 'In this point he 

 anticipates Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck. As we 

 shall see, however, his notions were much less firmly 



*Osborn adopts, without warrant Ave think, Isidore Geoffroy St. Hi- 

 laire's notion, stating that he " shows clearly that his opinions marked 

 three periods." The writings of Isidore, the son of £tienne Geoffroy, 

 have not the vigor, exactness, or depth of those of his father. 



\ Tome xiv., p. 326 (1766). 



