earth, and the law of attraction), and partly experimental (body heat, heat in minerals, the nature of platinum, the ductility of iron). Then were discussed incandescence, fusion, ships' guns, the strength and resistance of wood, the preservation of forests and reafforestation, the cooling of the earth, the temperature of planets, additional observations on quadrupeds already described, accounts of animals not noticed before, such as the tapir, quagga, gnu, nylghau, many antelopes, the vicuña, Cape ant-eater, star-nosed mole, sea-lion, and others; the probabilities of life (a subject on which the author plumed himself), and his essay on the Epochs of Nature.

Nor did these concurrent series of books exhaust his boundless energy and ingenuity, for in the five years preceding his death (1783–1788), he produced his "Natural History of Minerals" in five volumes, the last of which was mainly occupied with electricity, magnetism, and the loadstone. It is true that the researches of modern chemists have wrought havoc with Buffon's work in this field; but this was his misfortune rather than his fault, and leaves untouched the quantity of his output.

Buffon invoked the aid of the artist almost from the first, and his "Natural History" is illustrated by hundreds of full-page copper-plate engravings, and embellished with numerous elegant headpiece designs. The figures of the animals are mostly admirable examples of portraiture, though the classical backgrounds lend a touch of the grotesque to many of the compositions. Illustrations of anatomy, physiology, and other features of a technical character are to be numbered by the score, and are, of course, indispensable in such a work. The editio princeps is cherished by collectors because of the 1,008 coloured plates ("Planches Enluminées") in folio, the text itself being in quarto, by the younger Daubenton, whose work was spiritedly engraved by Martinet. Apparently anxious to illustrate one section exhaustively rather than several sections in a fragmentary manner, the artist devoted himself chiefly to the birds, which monopolise probably nine-tenths of the plates, and to which he may also have been attracted by their gorgeous plumages.

As soon as the labourer's task was over, his scientific friends thought the best monument which they could raise to his memory was to complete his "Natural History." This duty was discharged by two men, who, both well qualified, worked, however, on independent lines. Count Lacépède, adhering to the format of the original, added two volumes on the Reptiles (1788–1789), five on the Fishes (1798–1803), and one on the Cetaceans (1804). Sonnini de Manoncourt (1751–1812), feeling that this edition, though extremely handsome, was cumbersome, undertook an entirely new edition in octavo. This was begun in 1797, and finished in 1808. It occupied 127 volumes, and, Lacépède's treatises not being available, Sonnini himself dealt with the Fishes (thirteen volumes) and Whales (one volume), P.A. Latreille with the Crustaceans and Insects (fourteen volumes), Denys-Montfort with the Molluscs (six volumes), F.M. Dandin with the Reptiles (eight volumes), and C.F. Brisseau-Mirbel and N. Jolyclerc with the Plants (eighteen volumes). Sonnini's edition constituted the cope-stone of Buffon's work, and remained the best edition, until the whole structure was thrown down by the views of later naturalists, who revolutionised zoology.

IV.—Place and Doctrine

Buffon may justly be acclaimed as the first populariser of natural history. He was, however, unscientific in his opposition to systems, which, in point of fact, essentially elucidated the important doctrine that a continuous succession of forms runs throughout the animal kingdom. His recognition of this principle was, indeed, one of his greatest services to the science.

Another of his wise generalisations was that Nature proceeds by unknown gradations, and consequently cannot adapt herself to formal analysis, since she passes from one species to another, and often from one genus to another, by shades of difference so delicate as to be wholly imperceptible.

In Buffon's eyes Nature is an infinitely diversified whole which it is impossible to break up and classify. "The animal combines all the powers of Nature; the forces animating it are peculiarly its own; it wishes, does, resolves, works, and communicates by its senses with the most distant objects. One's self is a centre where everything agrees, a point where all the universe is reflected, a world in miniature." In natural history, accordingly, each animal or plant ought to have its own biography and description.

Life, Buffon also held, abides in organic molecules. "Living beings are made up of these molecules, which exist in countless numbers, which may be separated but cannot be destroyed, which pierce into brute matter, and, working there, develop, it may be animals, it may be plants, according to the nature of the matter in which they are lodged. These indestructible molecules circulate throughout the universe, pass from one being to another, minister to the continuance of life, provide for nutrition and the growth of the individual, and determine the reproduction of the species."

Buffon further taught that the quantity and quality of life pass from lower to higher stages—in Tennysonian phrase, men "rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things"—and showed the unity and structure of all beings, of whom man is the most perfect type.

It has been claimed that Buffon in a measure anticipated Lamarck and Darwin. He had already foreseen the mutability of species, but had not succeeded in proving it for varieties and races. If he asserted that the species of dog, jackal, wolf and fox were derived from a single one of these species, that the horse came from the zebra, and so on, this was far from being tantamount to a demonstration of the doctrine. In fact, he put forward the mutability of species rather as probable theory than as established truth, deeming it the corollary of his views on the succession and connection of beings in a continuous series.

Some case may be made out for regarding Buffon as the founder of zoogeography; at all events he was the earliest to determine the natural habitat of each species. He believed that species changed with climate, but that no kind was found throughout all the globe. Man alone has the privilege of being everywhere and always the same, because the human race is one. The white man (European or Caucasian), the black man (Ethiopian), the yellow man (Mongol), and the red man (American) are only varieties of the human species. As the Scots express it with wonted pith, "We're a' Jock Tamson's bairns."

As to his geological works, Buffon expounded two theories of the formation of the globe. In his "Théorie de la Terre" he supported the Neptunists, who attributed the phenomena of the earth to the action of water. In his "Epoques de la Nature" he amplified the doctrines of Leibniz, and laid down the following propositions: (1) The earth is elevated at the equator and depressed at the poles in accordance with the laws of gravitation and centrifugal force; (2) it possesses an internal heat, apart from that received from the sun; (3) its own heat is insufficient to maintain life; (4) the substances of which the earth is composed are of the nature of glass, or can be converted into glass as the result of heat and fusion—that is, are verifiable; (5) everywhere on the surface, including mountains, exist enormous quantities of shells and other maritime remains.

To the theses just enumerated Buffon added what he called the "monuments," or what Hugh Miller, a century later, more aptly described as the Testimony of the Rocks. From a consideration of all these things, Buffon at length