EVOLUTIONARY VIEWS OF BUFFON 



209 



arriving at any perfect system or method in dealing 

 either with nature as a whole or even with any single 

 one of her subdivisions. The gradations are so subtle 

 that we are often obliged to make arbitrary divisions. 

 Nature knows nothing about our classifications, and 

 does not choose to lend herself to them without 

 reasons. We therefore see a number of intermediate 

 species and objects which it is very hard to classify, 

 and which of necessity derange our system, whatever 

 it may be."* 



This is all true, and was probably felt by Buffon's 

 predecessors, but it does not imply that he thought 

 these forms had descended from one another. 



" In thus comparing," he adds, " all the animals, 

 and placing them each in its proper genus, we shall 

 find that the two hundred species whose history we 

 have given may be reduced to a quite small number 

 of families or principal sources from which it is not 

 impossible that all the others may have issued." f 



He then establishes, on the one hand, nine species 

 which he regarded as isolated, and, on the other, 

 fifteen principal genera, primitive sources or, as we 

 would say, ancestral forms, from which he derived 

 all the animals (mammals) known to him. 



Hence he believed that he could derive the dog, 

 the jackal, the wolf, and the fox from a single one 

 of these four species ; yet he remarks, per contra, in 



1753: 



"Although we cannot demonstrate that the pro- 

 duction of a species by modification is a thing impos- 



* Tome i., p. 13- t Tome xiv., p. 358. 



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