tive modification in every other part, and it is from this cause that our domestic animals differ almost as much in nature and instinct, as in form, from those from which they originally sprung." * Buffon confirms this last assertion by quoting the sheep as an example—an animal which can now no longer exist in a wild state. Then returning to cattle, he repeats that many varieties have been formed by the effects" diverse in themselves, and diverse in their combinations-of climate, food, and treatment, whether under domestication or in their wild state." These are the main causes of variation ("causes générales de variété "), † among our domesticated animals, but by far the greatest is changed climate in consequence of their accompanying man in his migrations. The effects of the foregoing causes of modification, especially the last of them, are repeatedly insisted on in the course of the forty pages which complete the preliminary account of the buffalo. What holds good for the buffalo does so also for the mouflon or wild sheep. This, Buffon declares to be the source of all our domesticated breeds: of these there are in all some four or five, "all of them being but degenerations from a single stock, produced by man's agency, and propagated for his convenience." At the same time that man has protected them he has hunted out the original race which was "less useful to him," § so that it is now to be found only in a few secluded spots, such as the mountains of Greece, Cyprus, and Sardinia. * Tom. xi. p. 290, 1764 (misprinted on title-page 1754). Ibid. p. 363. § Ibid. p. 363. Buffon does not consider even the differences between sheep and goats to be sufficiently characteristic to warrant their being classed as different species. "I shall never tire," he continues, "of repeatingseeing how important the matter is-that we must not form our opinions concerning nature, nor differentiate (différencier) her species, by a reference to minor special characteristics. And, again, that systems, far from having illustrated the history of animals, have, on the contrary, served rather to obscure it. . . . leading, as they do, to the creation of arbitrary species which nature knows nothing about; perpetually confounding real and hypothetical existences; giving us false ideas as to the very essence of species; uniting them and separating them without foundation or knowledge, and often without our having seen the animal with which we are dealing.”* First and Second Views of Nature. The twelfth volume begins with a preface, entitled "A First View of Nature," from which I take the following: "What cannot Nature effect with such means at her disposal? She can do all except either create matter or destroy it. These two extremes of power the deity has reserved for himself only; creation and destruction are the attributes of his omnipotence. To alter and undo, to develop and to renew-these are powers which he has handed over to the charge of Nature." † The thirteenth volume opens with a second view of nature. After describing what a man would have ob* Tom. xi. p. 370, 1764. † Ibid. xii., preface, iv. 1764. served if he could have lived during many continuous ages, Buffon goes on to say: "And as the number, sustenance, and balance of power among species is constant, Nature would present ever the same appearance, and would be in all times and under all climates absolutely and relatively the same, if it were not her fashion to vary her individual forms as much as possible. The type of each species is founded in a mould of which the principal features have been cut in characters that are ineffaceable and eternally permanent, but all the accessory touches vary; no one individual is the exact facsimile of any other, and no species exists without a large number of varieties. In the human race on which the divine seal has been set most firmly, there are yet varieties of black and white, large and small races, the Patagonian, Hottentot, European, American, Negro, which, though all descended from a common father, nevertheless exhibit no very brotherly resemblance to one another." * On an earlier page there is a passage which I may quote as showing Buffon to have not been without some -though very imperfect-perception of the fact which evidently made so deep an impression upon his successor, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. I refer to that continuity of life in successive generations, and that oneness of personality between parents and offspring, which is the only key that will make the phenomena of heredity intelligible. "Man," he says, " and especially educated man, is no longer a single individual, but represents no small *Tom. xiii., preface, x. 1765. part of the human race in its entirety. He was the first to receive from his fathers the knowledge which their own ancestors had handed down to them. These, having discovered the divine art of fixing their thoughts so that they can transmit them to their posterity, become, as it were, one and the same people with their descendants (se sont, pour ainsi dire, identifiés avec leur neveux); while our descendants will in their turn be one. and the same people with ourselves (s'identifieront avec nous). This reunion in a single person of the experience of many ages, throws back the boundaries of man's existence to the utmost limits of the past; he is no longer a single individual, limited as other beings are to the sensations and experiences of to-day. In place of the individual we have to deal, as it were, with the whole species." * "Differences in exterior are nothing in comparison with those in interior parts. These last must be regarded as the causes, while the others are but the effects. The interior parts of living beings are the foundation of the plan of their design; this is their essential form, their real shape, their exterior is only the surface, or rather the drapery in which their true figure is enveloped. How often does not the study of comparative anatomy show us that two exteriors which differ widely conceal interiors absolutely like each other, and, on the contrary, that the smallest internal difference is accompanied by the most marked differences of outward appearance, changing as it does even the natural habits, faculties and attributes of the animal?"† * Tom. xiii., preface, iv. 1765. + Ibid. xiii. p. 37. Apes and Monkeys. The fourteenth volume is devoted to apes and monkeys, and to the chapter with which the volumes on quadrupeds are brought to a conclusion-a chapter for which perhaps the most important position in the whole work is thus assigned. It is very long, and is headed "On Descent with Modification" ("De la Dégénération des Animaux"). This is the chapter in which Buffon enters more fully into the "causes or means of the transformation of species. At the opening of the chapter on the nomenclature of monkeys, the theory is broached that there is a certain fixed amount of life-substance as of matter in nature; and that neither can be either augmented or diminished. Buffon maintains this organic and living substance to be as real and durable as inanimate matter; as permanent in its state of life as the other in that of death; it is spread over the whole of nature, and passes from vegetables to animals by way of nutrition, and from animals back to vegetables through putrefaction, thus circulating incessantly to the animation of all that lives. As might be expected, Buffon is loud in his protest against any real similarity between man and the apesman has had the spirit of the Deity breathed into his nostrils, and the lowest creature with this is higher than the highest without it. Having settled this point, he makes it his business to show how little difference in other respects there is between the apes and man. "One who could view," he writes, " Nature in her |