esta, we have no native authorities for Persian history of any
value, until the appearance in the eleventh century of the Shah Nameh;
in which, however, Firdusi has mingled the miraculous relations of those
two religions by which his country had been successively subjected. The
result is, that if it were not for the various discoveries which have
been made, of monuments, inscriptions, and coins, we should be compelled
to rely on the scanty and inaccurate details in the Greek writers for
our knowledge of the history of one of the most important of the Asiatic
monarchies.

GEORGE LOUIS LE CLERC BUFFON

(1707-1788)

BY SPENCER TROTTER

A science becomes part of the general stock of knowledge only after it
has entered into the literature of a people. The bare skeleton of facts
must be clothed with the flesh and blood of imagination, through the
humanizing influence of literary expression, before it can be
assimilated by the average intellectual being. The scientific
investigator is rarely endowed with the gift of weaving the facts into a
story that will charm, and the man of letters is too often devoid of
that patience which is the chief virtue of the scientist. These gifts of
the gods are bestowed upon mankind under the guiding genius of the
division of labor. The name of Buffon will always be associated with
natural history, though in the man himself the spirit of science was
conspicuously absent. In this respect he was in marked contrast with his
contemporary Linnaeus, whose intellect and labor laid the foundations of
much of the scientific knowledge of to-day.

[ILLUSTRATION: BUFFON]

George Louis le Clerc Buffon was born on the 7th of September, 1707, at
Montbar, in Burgundy. His father, Benjamin le Clerc, who was possessed
of a fortune, appears to have bestowed great care and liberality on the
education of his son. While a youth Buffon made the acquaintance of a
young English nobleman, the Duke of Kingston, whose tutor, a man well
versed in the knowledge of physical science, exerted a profound
influence on the future career of the young Frenchman. At twenty-one
Buffon came into his mother's estate, a fortune yielding an annual
income of L12,000. But this wealth did not change his purpose to gain
knowledge. He traveled through Italy, and after living for a short
period in England returned to France and devoted his time to literary
work. His first efforts were translations of two English works of
science--Ha