[124] See A. Hyatt’s Revision of North American Poriferæ, Part II. (Boston, 1877, p. 11); also the present writer in his Text-book of Zoölogy (1878).
CHAPTER XIII
THE EVOLUTIONARY VIEWS OF BUFFON AND OF GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE
Of the French precursors of Lamarck there were four—Duret (1609), De Maillet (1748), Robinet (1768), and Buffon. The opinions of the first three could hardly be taken seriously, as they were crude and fantastic, though involving the idea of descent. The suggestions and hypotheses of Buffon and of Erasmus Darwin were of quite a different order, and deserve careful consideration.
Drawn by A. Deroy, 1886
MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED, 1793–1829
George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, was born in 1707 at Montbard, Burgundy, in the same year as Linné. He died at Paris in 1788, at the age of eighty-one years. He inherited a large property from his father, who was a councillor of the parliament of Burgundy. He studied at Dijon, and travelled abroad. Buffon was rich, but, greatly to his credit, devoted all his life to the care of the Royal Garden and to writing his works, being a most prolific author. He was not an observer, not even a closet naturalist. “I have passed,” he is reported to have said, “fifty years at my desk.” Appointed in 1739, when he was thirty-two years old, Intendant of the Royal Garden, he divided his time between his retreat at Montbard and Paris, spending four months in Paris and the remainder of the year at Montbard, away from the distractions and dissipations of the capital. It is significant that he wrote his great Histoire naturelle at Montbard and not at Paris, where were the collections of natural history.
His biographer, Flourens, says: “What dominates in the character of Buffon is elevation, force, the love of greatness and glory; he loved magnificence in everything. His fine figure, his majestic air, seemed to have some relation with the greatness of his genius; and nature had refused him none of those qualities which could attract the attention of mankind.