tured irony of one who is merely
amusing himself at other people's expense, but the serious and
legitimate irony of one who must either limit the circle of those to
whom he appeals, or must know how to make the same language appeal
differently to the different capacities of his readers, and who trusts
to the good sense of the discerning to understand the difficulty of his
position, and make due allowance for it.

The compromise which he thought fit to put before the public was that
"Each species has a type of which the principal features are engraved in
indelible and eternally permanent characters, while all accessory
touches vary."[48] It would be satisfactory to know where an accessory
touch is supposed to begin and end.

And again:--

"The essential characteristics of every animal have been conserved
without alteration in their most important parts.... The individuals of
each genus still represent the same forms as they did in the earliest
ages, especially in the case of the larger animals" (so that the generic
forms even of the larger animals prove not to be the same, but only
'especially' the same as in the earliest ages).[49]

This transparently illogical position is maintained ostensibly from
first to last, much in the same spirit as in the two foregoing passages,
written at intervals of thirteen years. But they are to be read by the
light of the earlier one--placed as a lantern to the wary upon the
threshold of his work in 1753--to the effect that a single, well
substantiated case of degeneration would make it conceivable that all
living beings were descended from a single common ancestor. If after
having led up to this by a remorseless logic, a man is found
five-and-twenty years later still substantiating cases of degeneration,
as he has been substantiating them unceasingly in thirty quartos during
the whole interval, there should be little question how seriously we
are to take him when he wishes us to stop short of the conclusions he
has told us we ought to draw from the premises that he has made it the
business of his life to establish--especially when we know that he has a
Sorbonne to keep a sharp eye upon him.

I believe that if the reader will bear in mind the twofold, serious and
ironical, character of Buffon's work he will understand it, and feel an
admiration for it which will grow continually greater and greater the
more he studies it, otherwise he will miss the whole point.

Buffon on one of th