an he had taken in middle life is also without foundation"[132]
(p. 104).

But he had more to say on the other side, that of the mutability of
species, and it is these tentative views that his commentators have
assumed to have been his real sentiments or belief, and for this reason
place Buffon among the evolutionists, though he had little or no idea of
evolution in the enlarged and thoroughgoing sense of Lamarck.

He states, however, that the presence of callosities on the legs of the
camel and llama "are the unmistakable results of rubbing or friction; so
also with the callosities of baboons and the pouched monkeys, and the
double soles of man's feet."[133] In this point he anticipates Erasmus
Darwin and Lamarck. As we shall see, however, his notions were much less
firmly grounded than those of Erasmus Darwin, who was a close observer
as well as a profound thinker.

In his chapter on the _Degeneration des Animaux_, or, as it is
translated, "modification of animals," Buffon insists that the three
causes are climate, food, and domestication. The examples he gives are
the sheep, which having originated, as he thought, from the mufflon,
shows marked changes. The ox varies under the influence of food; reared
where the pasturage is rich it is twice the size of those living in a
dry country. The races of the torrid zones bear a hump on their
shoulders; "the zebu, the buffalo, is, in short, only a variety, only a
race of our domestic ox." He attributed the camel's hump to domesticity.
He refers the changes of color in the northern hare to the simple change
of seasons.

He is most explicit in referring to the agency of climate, and also to
time and to the uniformity of nature's processes in causing variation.
Writing in 1756 he says:

"If we consider each species in the different climates which it
inhabits we shall find perceptible varieties as regards size and
form; they all derive an impress to a greater or less extent from
the climate in which they live. These changes are only made slowly
and imperceptibly. Nature's great workman is time. He marches ever
with an even pace and does nothing by leaps and bounds, but by
degrees, gradations, and succession he does all things; and the
changes which he works--at first imperceptible--become little by
little perceptible, and show themselves eventually in results about
which there can be no mistake. Nevertheless, animals in a free, wild
state are perhaps l