he leads his reader, merely because from time to
time he tells the reader, with a shrug of the shoulders, that _he_ draws
no inferences opposed to the Book of Genesis? Is it not more likely that
Buffon intended his reader to draw his inferences for himself, and
perhaps to value them all the more highly on that account?

The passage to which I am alluding is as follows:--

"If from the boundless variety which animated nature presents to us, we
choose the body of some animal or even that of man himself to serve as a
model with which to compare the bodies of other organized beings, we
shall find that though all these beings have an individuality of their
own, and are distinguished from one another by differences of which the
gradations are infinitely subtle, there exists at the same time a
primitive and general design which we can follow for a long way, and the
departures from which (_degenerations_) are far more gentle than those
from mere outward resemblance. For not to mention organs of digestion,
circulation, and generation, which are common to all animals, and
without which the animal would cease to be an animal, and could neither
continue to exist nor reproduce itself--there is none the less even in
those very parts which constitute the main difference in outward
appearance, a striking resemblance which carries with it irresistibly
the idea of a single pattern after which all would appear to have been
conceived. The horse, for example--what can at first sight seem more
unlike mankind? Yet when we compare man and horse point by point and
detail by detail, is not our wonder excited rather by the points of
resemblance than of difference that are to be found between them? Take
the skeleton of a man; bend forward the bones in the region of the
pelvis, shorten the thigh bones, and those of the leg and arm, lengthen
those of the feet and hands, run the joints together, lengthen the jaws,
and shorten the frontal bone, finally, lengthen the spine, and the
skeleton will now be that of a man no longer, but will have become that
of a horse--for it is easy to imagine that in lengthening the spine and
the jaws we shall at the same time have increased the number of the
vertebrae, ribs, and teeth. It is but in the number of these bones, which
may be considered accessory, and by the lengthening, shortening, or mode
of attachment of others, that the skeleton of the horse differs from
that of the human body.... We find ribs in man, in