IV 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
cular objedf, may, without boafting, be allowed to have greater 
perfpicacity than thofe of many other people who have happier 
quicknefs of fight in more important matters. — Like another 
Proteus , he affinities variety of fhapes ; we are as much amazed 
at the form as the place in which he rifes ; he goes down in 
one and comes up in another fhape. To anticipate his emer- 
fion, to point out his track, and to foretel the figure in which 
he will prefent himfelf to us, is the exercife of the following 
pages. So charming is his manner, that by a delicious fafcina- 
tion, even the dull labor of index-making never once appeared 
irkfome. 
But to quit metaphor. -Inorder to give facility to the read- 
ing of the laid nine entertaining volumes of that able writer 
the Comte de Buffon, I undertook the talk of forming two 
Indexes 5 the one to thofe volumes— -the other to the Planches 
Pnluminees, a vaft mute work of a thoufand and eight colored 
plates, publifhed in the name of a M. Daubenton , under the 
aufpices of the Comte, and entirely fubfervient to his Ornithologies 
Every thing in it Is given pele-mele, without a catalogue, or a 
fyllable indicative of the contents of the collection.— In one In- 
dex, I firftly refer to the nine volumes of the Ornitholo'gie 3 and, 
according to the predilection every author has for his own 
works, arrange the fubjeCts according to the fyflem layed down 
m 
