ps produced by the hand of the
anatomist and the method of dissection."[98]

_The Genus felis._

In his preliminary remarks upon the lion, Buffon while still professing
to believe in some considerable mutability of species, seems very far
from admitting that all living forms are capable of modification. But he
has shown us long since how clearly he saw the impossibility of limiting
mutability, if he once admitted so much of the thin end of the wedge as
that a horse and an ass might be related. It is plain, therefore, that
he is not speaking "_au reel_" here, and we accordingly find him talking
clap-trap about the nobleness of the lion in having no species
immediately allied to it. A few lines lower on he reminds us in a casual
way that the ass and horse are related.

He writes:--

"Added to all these noble individual features the lion has also what may
be called a _specific_ nobility. For I call those species noble which
are constant, invariable, and which are above suspicion of having
degenerated. These species are commonly isolated, and the only ones of
their genus. They are distinguished by such well-marked features that
they cannot be mistaken, nor confounded with any other species. To begin
for example with man, the noblest of created beings; he is but of a
single species, inasmuch as men and women will breed freely _inter se_
in spite of all existing differences of race, climate and colour; and
also inasmuch as there is no other animal which can claim either a
distant or near relationship with him. The horse, on the other hand, is
more noble as an individual than as a species, for he has the ass as
his near neighbour, _and seems himself to be nearly enough related to
it_; ... the dog is perhaps of even less noble species, approaching as
he does to the wolf, fox, and jackal, _which we can only consider to be
the degenerated species of a single family_"[99]--all which may seem
very natural opinions for a French aristocrat in the days before the
Revolution, but which cannot for a moment be believed to have been
Buffon's own. I have not ascertained the date of Buffon's little quarrel
with the Sorbonne, but I cannot doubt that if we knew the inner history
of the work we are considering, we should find this passage and others
like it explained by the necessity of quieting orthodox adversaries. He
concludes the paragraph from which I have just been quoting by saying,
"To class man and the ape together, or the lion