n
whatever for their readers. They seem, in fact, to have forgotten
what they have to say in their endeavour to tell us what has been said
by other people.

"I picture to myself a man like Aldrovandus, after he has once
conceived the design of writing a complete natural history. I see him
in his library reading, one after the other, ancients, moderns,
philosophers, 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?"
{180}

It is hoped that the reader will see Buffon, much as 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.

EXTRACTS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY.

RECAPITULATION AND STATEMENT OF AN OBJECTION. (CHAPTER X. OF