212 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



^ The impression left on the mind, after reading 

 Buffon, is that even if he threw out these suggestions 

 and then retracted them, from fear of annoyance or 

 even persecution from the bigots of his time, he did 

 not himself always take them seriously, but rather 

 jotted them down as passing thoughts. Certainly he 

 did not present them in the formal, forcible, and 

 scientific way that Erasmus Darwin did. The lesalt 

 is-^rirat the tentative views of Buffon, whi^^h— haste-to 

 Jae-w-it-h-much research-extraet-ed. from -rt-her-loft-y^f our 

 volume-s- of his- works-,- would now be regarded as in a 

 degree superficial and valueless. But they appeared 

 thirty-four years before Lamarck's theory, and though 

 not epoch-making, they are such as will render the 

 name of Buffon memorable for all time. 



Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire. 



Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire was born at Etampes, 

 April 15, 1772. He died in Paris in 1844. He was 

 destined for the church, but his tastes were for a 

 scientific career. His acquaintance with the Abb6 

 Haiiy and Daubenton led him to study mineralogy. 

 He was the means of liberating Haiiy from a political 

 prison ; the Abb6, as the result of the events of 

 August, 1792, being promptly set free at the request 

 6i the Academy of Sciences. The young Geoffroy 

 was in his turn aided by the illustrious Haiiy, who 

 obtained for him the position of sub-guardian and 

 demonstrator of mineralogy in the Cabinet of Natural 

 History. At the early age of twenty-one years, as 

 we have seen, he was elected professor of zoology in 



