thoſe who have laid open to us the other three quarters of the world? Was natural hiſtory the object of their travels? Did they meaſure or weigh the animals they ſpeak of? or did they not judge of them by ſight, or perhaps even from report only? Were they acquainted with the animals of their own country, with which they undertake to compare them? Have they not been ſo ignorant as often to miſtake the ſpecies? A true anſwer to theſe queſtions would probably lighten their authority, ſo as to render it inſufficient for the foundation of an hypotheſis. How unripe we yet are, for an accurate compariſon of the animals of the two countries, will appear from the work of Monſieur de Buffon. The ideas we ſhould have formed of the ſizes of ſome animals, from the imformation he had received at his firſt publications concerning them, are very different from what his ſubſequent communications give us. And indeed his candor in this can never be too much praiſed. One ſentence of his book muſt do him immortal honor. ‘J'aime autante une perſonne qui me releve d'une erreur, qu'une autre qui m'apprend une verité, parce qu'en effect une erreur corrigée eſt une verité.’[1] He ſeems to have thought the cabiai he firſt examined wanted little of its full growth. ‘Il ne'etoit pas encore tout-a-fait adulte.’[2] Yet he weighed but 46 and half lb. and he found afterwards,[3] that theſe animals when full grown, weighed 100lb. He had ſuppoſed from the examination of a jaugar,[4] ſaid to be two years old, which weighed but 16lb. 12oz. that when he ſhould have acquired his full growth, he would
