second the tendency is to rest rather on differences. A mind perfectly adapted to the pursuit of any great subject must, of course, have both sets of faculties at its disposal, especially in the case of natural history,—seeing that all true classification rests essentially on binary terms, one term expressing how near the object is to other objects, and the second term how far, through its individuality, it stands apart. The faculty to discern differences is, when isolated, a microscopic one, implying no exercise of imagination or of any generalizing power; neither, if we consider the vast and various work it has to do, ought it perhaps to be regretted that the men who possess it in greater or less perfection, are comparatively the most numerous of inquirers. Buffon's nature failed here, and the weakness (confirmed in so far by his poor eyesight) had not been removed by an adequate education. But he learned the existence of his weakness, and took means to secure that the edifice he conceived should not be inharmonious through effect of the imperfection of its architect. He early associated with him, and inspired by the influence of his genius, the acute and painstaking Daubenton, whose contributions to the anatomy of zoology are and ever will be a constituent element of the "Histoire Naturelle." Offended by one of those acts which, however right and just, are singularly apt to be misconceived by an assistant, Daubenton dissolved the association; and Buffon, for the reason aforesaid, then resorted to the counsels of the assiduous and affectionate Gueneau de Montbelliard, and the Abbé Bexon. But as years advanced, and his labours grew towards their consummation, the architect himself increased in skill, and rose superior to defects. It is in the early volumes only of his enterprise that we find those ill-judged, because ill-informed references to the immortal Linnæus—Buffon's only compeer in that age: for, when he has reached the department of Birds, he has departed wholly from the idea that the creatures should be classified according to their usefulness and interest to man, and given practical effect to premonitions, strewn through his writings from the first, to the effect that there is a unity throughout nature and all its departments, and therefore a positive ground in the structure of every class of beings, for an arrangement or grouping deeper than even Linnæus had dreamt of. The "naturalists" of the time could not discern his progress, or were unwilling to acknowledge it. They estimated defects, but they failed to estimate in hints scattered through various separate notices—such as those on the Ass and the Zebra—that an intellect and a genius had arisen capable of repeating, enlarging, and adorning the enterprises of an Aristotle and a Pliny. One other fact they failed to see. The title of Buffon's immortal work is "Histoire Naturelle generale et particuliere," and Buffon felt rightly, and from first to last wrote under the conviction, that general treatment and undivided attention to general theorems obscure our eyesight as to things, and had gone far to destroy all true interest in the "creatures." By whom else has the nature of an animal been ever so thoroughly realized? By whom presented so affectionately and so faithfully? A single picture of our Landseer is, in this respect, worth tons of disquisitions, and while they rot, it will be immortal. The illustrious Swede felt this as deeply as any man: "Venit, venit hirundo, pulchra adducens tempora et pulchros annos!" Who but Buffon could have written of the stag that Landseer has so often painted! "Le cerf paraît avoir l'œil bon, l'odorat exquis, et l'oreille excellente. Lorsqu'il veut ecouter, il lève la tête, dresse les oreilles, et alors il entend de fort loin: lorsqu'il sort dans un petit tallis ou dans quelque autre endroit à demi decouvert, il s'arrête pour regarder de tous côtes et cherche ensuite le dessous du vent pour sentir s'il n'y a pas quelqu'un que puisse l'inquiéter!"
Thus even the limitations of Buffon's mind were counteracted, in so far as they could seriously impede his efforts, or mar his immortal work. But that very excess of the intellectual faculty which threatened to injure the inquirer, was really the cause of much of his grandeur, and the peculiarity that enabled him to impress so ineffaceably an influence on the future. It is not requisite to fall back here on the obscure and questionable doctrine of Geoffrey St. Hilaire, on what he calls the "Theory of Necessary Ideas;"—Buffon's influence and power can be explained quite otherwise. The predominance of the element "imagination" impelled him irresistibly to seek for analogies, and inspired him with a conviction, fixed as that in his own existence, that unity and harmony underlie the whole variety and seeming disorders of the universe. Such a conviction, so rooted, has one inevitable result in its action on a mind struggling through the narrow ways of imperfect knowledge: it constrains it to frame "systems" or hypotheses. These systems, as Buffon himself says, are the means by which alone the inquirer can put his whole thought and soul into his subject. It is only needful that he hold them at their true value; or that he always feel disposed to write thus—"Nous nous refusons d'autant moins à publier ce que nous avons pensé sur cette matière que nous espérons par la mettre le lecteur plus en état de prononcer sur la grande différence qu'il y a entre une hypothese où il n'entre que des possibilités, et une theorie fondée sur les faits,—entre un systeme tel que nous allons en donner un dans cet article sur la formation et le premier état de la terre, et une histoire physique de son état actuel, telle que nous venons de la donner dans le discours precédent." The systems or hypotheses of a man of genius, are in reality the expression of his philosophic power, and of his faculty of discovery,—they are his gropings. Living in more advanced times, and under the light of established generalizations, we are apt to forget what science and the course of thought owe to those majestic "Theorie de la Fevre," and "Epoques de la Nature." Buffon did not imagine that the process he has described so loftily, was the course actually pursued by the Creator. But persuaded irrevocably that the present hangs by a long past, and that out of the present the future must be unfolded, he cast aside the cataclysmal vagaries of his predecessors, and with a few hints from Leibnitz, and perhaps Woodward, alone ventured to suggest that by some such process—by some such constant and orderly action of cosmical laws, has the existing order, with all its bewildering variety, been evolved. Take up Burnet or Whiston—not as to their systems, which are simply absurd, but as to the spirit of their systems—is it possible for any inquirer to mistake the genius or underrate the value of the impulse given by the Frenchman? Nay, Cuvier himself, with all his greatness, ranks here immeasurably below Buffon. He, too, propounded a system without fully recognizing that it was only a system. But the spirit of Cuvier's system is in contrast exceedingly disadvantageous with that of the "Epoques de la Nature." Like Burnet and Whiston, he accepts the doctrine of cataclysms—a doctrine which, wherever and under whatever form it appears, is simply an abnegation of all true or attainable philosophy, and which Buffon, first of all among our modern greatest men, had the courage and the honour to discredit and expel from within the demesne of rational inquiry. Had we space or leisure to analyse the "Epoques de la Nature," we might indicate remarkable forecastings as to the largest generalizations of our existing geology. Passing from such, however, let us search a few of the positive and universally acknowledged debts of science to the "inventive" or lofty generalizing power of Buffon. He has bequeathed a few theorems, as indisputable as the famous one of Pythagoras, and which go far to form the bases of scientific natural history. It is to this remarkable thinker that we owe our first clear and practical connection of the distribution of animals with the geography of the globe. Previous to Buffon's labours, natural history had, in this respect, no light whatsoever; the animals had no recognized relationship with their habitats, or—to speak more correctly—no natural habitat at all; each one appearing to live indifferently where it could or where it listed, or where it had been originally set down. The proclamation of a geographical distribution or arrangement, depending inevitably on climate and a few other natural conditions, was an epoch in science. Occasioning not unnaturally much surprise, and exciting vast alarm and bitter hostility at the time, it has not only grown into an accepted and indubitable truth, but is the clue by whose aid inquirers are now striving to thread the labyrinth of the organized world. Then, for the first time, were the forms of organization brought into clear relationship with the grand physical forces and their arrangements. Closely connected with the paramount law referred to, is Buffon's important generalization regarding the unity of the human species, notwithstanding diversity in colour and less essential features. The great debt, however, owing to him as to this order of truths, is his discovery of the test, or "general term," of a species. Earliest among naturalists, he laid that down to be fecundity, or the power to continue itself. But while drawing an ineffaceable line between an actual species, and all mere anomalies, he guards himself from a philosophical error of the gravest description that is still prevalent, and into which also the great Cuvier fell, or rather rushed head-
