Birds.
In the preface to his volumes upon birds, Buffon says that these are not only much more numerous than quadrupeds, but that they also exhibit a far larger number of varieties, and individual variations.
"The diversities," he declares, "which arise from the effects of climate and food, of domestication, captivity, transportation, voluntary and compulsory migration—all the causes in fact of alteration and degeneration—unite to throw difficulties in the way of the ornithologist."[133]
He points out the infinitely keener vision of birds than that of man and quadrupeds, and connects it with their habits and requirements.[134] He does not appear to consider it as caused by those requirements, though it is quite conceivable that he saw this, but thought he had already said enough. He repeatedly refers to the effects of changed climate and of domestication, but I find nothing in the first volume which modifies the position already taken by him in regard to descent with modification: it is needless, therefore, to repeat the few passages which are to be found bearing at all upon the subject. The chapter on the birds that cannot fly, contains a sentence which seems to be the germ that has been developed, in the hands of Lamarck, into the comparison between nature and a tree. Buffon says that the chain of nature is not a single long chain, but is comparable rather to something woven, "which at certain intervals throws out a branch sideways that unites it with the strands of some other weft."[135] On the following page there is a passage which has been quoted as an example of Buffon's contempt for the men of science of his time. The writer maintains that the most lucid arrangement of birds, would have been to begin with those which most resembled quadrupeds. "The ostrich, which approaches the camel in the shape of its legs, and the porcupine in the quills with which its wings are armed, should have immediately followed the quadrupeds, but philosophy is often obliged to make a show of yielding to popular opinions, and the tribe of naturalists is both numerous and impatient of any disturbance of its methods. It would only, then, have regarded this arrangement as an unreasonable innovation caused by a desire to contradict and to be singular."[136]
It is, I believe, held not only by "le peuple des naturalistes," but by most sensible persons, that the proposed arrangement would not have been an improvement. I find, however, in the preface to the third volume on birds that M. Gueneau de Montbeillard described all the birds from the ostrich to the quail, so the foregoing passage is perhaps his and not Buffon's. If so, the imitation is fair, but when we reflect upon it we feel uncertain whether it is or is not beneath Buffon's dignity.
Here, as often with pictures and music, we cannot criticise justly without taking more into consideration than is actually before us. We feel almost inclined to say that if the passage is by Buffon it is probably right, and if by M. Gueneau de Montbeillard, probably wrong. It must also be remembered that, as we learn from the preface already referred to, Buffon was seized at this point in his work with a long and painful illness, which continued for two years; a single hasty passage in so great a writer may well be pardoned under such circumstances.
Looking through the third and remaining volumes on birds, the greater part of which was by Gueneau de Montbeillard, and bearing in mind that in point of date they are synchronous with some of those upon quadrupeds from which I have already extracted as much as my space will allow, and not seeing anything on a rapid survey which promises to throw new light upon the author's opinions, I forbear to quote further. I therefore leave Buffon with the hope that I have seen him more justly than some others have done, but with the certainty that the points I have caught and understood are few in comparison with those that I have missed.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] 'Hist. Nat.,' tom. i. p. 13, 1749.
[66] Ibid.