sophers,
theologians, jurisconsults, historians, travellers, poets, and reading
with no other end than with that of catching at all words and phrases
which can be forced from far or near into some kind of relation with his
subject. I see him copying all these passages, or getting them copied
for him, and arranging them in alphabetical order. He fills many
portfolios with all manner of notes, often taken without either
discrimination or research, and at last sets himself to write with a
resolve that not one of all these notes shall remain unused. The result
is that when he comes to his account of the cow or of the hen, he will
tell us all that has ever yet been said about cows or hens; all that the
ancients ever thought about them; all that has ever been imagined
concerning their virtues, characters, and courage; every purpose to
which they have ever yet been put; every story of every old woman that
he can lay hold of; all the miracles which certain religions have
ascribed to them; all the superstitions they have given rise to; all the
metaphors and allegories which poets have drawn from them; the
attributes that have been assigned to them; the representations that
have been made of them in hieroglyphics and armorial bearings, in a word
all the histories and all fables in which there was ever yet any mention
either of a cow or hen. How much natural history is likely to be found
in such a lumber room? and how is one to lay one's hand upon the little
that there may actually be?"[50]

It is hoped that the reader will see Buffon, much us Buffon saw the
learned Aldrovandus. He should see him going into his library, &c., and
quietly chuckling to himself as he wrote such a passage as the one in
which we lately found him saying that the larger animals had
"especially" the same generic forms as they had always had. And the
reader should probably see Daubenton chuckling also.

FOOTNOTES:

[39] Tom. i. p. 24, 1749.

[40] Tom. i. p. 40, 1749.

[41] Vol. i. p. 34, 1749.

[42] Tom. i. p. 36.

[43] See p. 88 of this volume; see also p. 155, and 164.

[44] Tom. i. p. 33.

[45] 'The Naturalist's Library,' vol. ii. p. 23, Edinburgh, 1843.

[46] Tom. iv. p. 381, 1753.

[47] Tom. iv. p. 383, 1753 (this was the first volume on the lower
animals).

[48] Tom. xiii. p. ix. 1765.

[49] Sup. tom. v. p. 27, 1778.

[50] Tom. i. p. 28, 1749.

CHAPTER X.

SUPPOSED FLUCTUATIONS OF OPINION--CAUSES OR MEANS OF THE TRANSFORMA