ed the name of "worth" as having
drawn the pattern of every leaf and organ now and in all past time, or he
who sees nothing in the world of nature but a chapter of accidents and of
forces interacting blindly?

BUFFON--MEMOIR. (CHAPTER VIII. OF EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.)

Buffon, says M. Flourens, was born at Montbar, on the 7th of September
1707; he died in Paris, at the Jardin du Roi, on the 16th of April 1788,
aged 81 years. More than fifty of these years, as he used himself to
say, he had passed at his writing-desk. His father was a councillor of
the parliament of Burgundy. His mother was celebrated for her wit, and
Buffon cherished her memory.

He studied at Dijon with much _eclat_, and shortly after leaving became
accidentally acquainted with the Duke of Kingston, a young Englishman of
his own age, who was travelling abroad with a tutor. The three travelled
together in France and Italy, and Buffon then passed some months in
England.

Returning to France, he translated Hales's Vegetable Statics and Newton's
Treatise on Fluxions. He refers to several English writers on natural
history in the course of his work, but I see he repeated spells the
English name Willoughby, "Willulghby." He was appointed superintendent
of the Jardin du Roi in 1739, and from thenceforth devoted himself to
science.

In 1752 Buffon married Mdlle de Saint Belin, whose beauty and charm of
manner were extolled by all her contemporaries. One son was born to him,
who entered the army, became a colonel, and I grieve to say, was
guillotined at the age of twenty-nine, a few days only before the
extinction of the Reign of Terror.

Of this youth, who inherited the personal comeliness and ability of his
father, little is recorded except the following story. Having fallen
into the water and been nearly drowned when he was about twelve years
old, he was afterwards accused of having been afraid: "I was so little
afraid," he answered, "that though I had been offered the hundred years
which my grandfather lived, I would have died then and there, if I could
have added one year to the life of my father;" then thinking for a
minute, a flush suffused his face and he added, "but I should petition
for one quarter of an hour in which to exult over the thought of what I
was about to do."

On the scaffold he showed much composure, smiling half proudly, half
reproachfully, yet wholly kindly upon the crowd in front of him.
"Citoyens," he said, "Je