FROM BUFFON TO DARWIN. 313 



what Buffon had begun. The indirect evidence may be taken 

 from our own Oliver Goldsmith, of all English authors perhaps 

 at once the most vain and the most delightful. He himself wrote 

 a Natural History, though he can scarcely disguise his contempt 

 for naturalists. He confesses that at first he had thought of 

 translating the credulous Pliny, and of adding his own precious 

 comments to make the work amusing, treating, as he says, what 

 he then conceived to be an idle subject in an idle manner. But 

 Buffon's 'History of Quadrupeds' appeared, and Goldsmith bowed 

 to the authority of a master mind. 



The same year that gave Buffon to France gave to Sweden 

 Linnaeus. His name, like Shakespeare's, is one of the few so per- 

 fectly familiar everywhere, so universally renowned and cherished, 

 that the owner of it seems to belong to every land as much as to 

 his actual birthplace. He taught the world that Nature has a 

 system. He took all naturalists for his pupils, and taught them 

 how to speak. He taught them, I mean, how to name the objects 

 of their study. He did in this respect for science what the 

 inventors of money did for trade and commerce. He bade us 

 designate each species by a couple of words instead of by a 

 descriptive paragraph. By thus making simple and easy what 

 before was complicated and cumbrous, he for the first time made 

 possible a thorough discussion of all plants and animals, and 

 threw open the study to mankind at large. Moreover, he took for 

 his pupils men of special devotion, Kalm and Hasselquist and 

 Forskal and many others, and sent them travelling over the world 

 to observe its treasures. He made an orderly record of all the 

 natural history objects discovered by all men everywhere. He 

 gave, in short, by his example and by his teaching, by what he 

 himself did and by what he induced others to do, such an impetus 

 to our science as no one man had ever given it before. 



The name of James Hutton is far less dazzling, by far less 

 widely celebrated, than that of Linnaeus ; but it has been shown 

 by those competent to judge that Hutton's services to science 

 were of the order which can truly be described as epoch-making. 

 His ' Theory of the Earth' upset many ancient opinions as deeply 

 rooted as mountain chains, as widely spread as the main oceans. 

 Contrary to the apparent evidence of men's senses, he maintained 

 that the crust of the globe is a great piece of machinery perpetually 



