to his heirs or executors. So Buffon
did not venture to say outright that he thought all animals and plants
were descended one from the other with slight modifications; that would
have been wicked, and the Sorbonne would have proved its wickedness to
him in a most conclusive fashion by promptly getting him imprisoned or
silenced. It is so easy to confute your opponent when you are a hundred
strong and he is one weak unit. Buffon merely said, therefore, that if
we didn't know the contrary to be the case by sure warrant, we might
easily have concluded (so fallible is our reason) that animals always
varied slightly, and that such variations, indefinitely accumulated,
would suffice to account for almost any amount of ultimate difference. A
donkey might thus have grown into a horse, and a bird might have
developed from a primitive lizard. Only we know it was quite otherwise!
A quiet hint from Buffon was as good as a declaration from many less
knowing or suggestive people. All over Europe, the wise took Buffon's
hint for what he meant it; and the unwise blandly passed it by as a mere
passing little foolish vagary of that great ironical writer and thinker.

Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of his grandson, was no fool; on the
contrary, he was the most far-sighted man of his day in England; he saw
at once what Buffon was driving at; and he worked out 'Mr. Buffon's'
half-concealed hint to all its natural and legitimate conclusions. The
great Count was always plain Mr. Buffon to his English contemporary.
Life, said Erasmus Darwin nearly a century since, began in very minute
marine forms, which gradually acquired fresh powers and larger bodies,
so as imperceptibly to transform themselves into different creatures.
Man, he remarked, anticipating his descendant, takes rabbits or
pigeons, and alters them almost to his own fancy, by immensely changing
their shapes and colours. If man can make a pouter or a fantail out of
the common runt, if he can produce a piebald lop-ear from the brown wild
rabbit, if he can transform Dorkings into Black Spanish, why cannot
Nature, with longer time to work in, and endless lives to try with,
produce all the varieties of vertebrate animals out of one single common
ancestor? It was a bold idea of the Lichfield doctor--bold, at least,
for the times he lived in--when Sam Johnson was held a mighty sage, and
physical speculation was regarded askance as having in it a dangerous
touch of the devil. But the Darw