t
the first pair of every species issued fully formed from the hands
of the Creator" (tome iv., p. 383).

In which of these views did Buffon really believe? Yet they appear in
the same volume, and not at different periods of his life.

He actually does say in the same volume (iv., p. 358): "It is not
impossible that all species may be derivations (_issues_)." In the same
volume also (p. 215) he remarks:

"There is in nature a general prototype in each species on which
each individual is modelled, but which seems, in being realized, to
change or become perfected by circumstances; so that, relatively to
certain qualities, there is a singular (_bizarre_) variation in
appearance in the succession of individuals, and at the same time a
constancy in the entire species which appears to be admirable."

And yet we find him saying at the same period of his life, in the
previous volume, that species "are the only beings in nature, beings
perpetual, as ancient, as permanent as she."[144] A few pages farther on
in the same volume of the same work, apparently written at the same
time, he is strongly and stoutly anti-evolutional, affirming: "The
imprint of each species is a type whose principal features are graven in
characters forever ineffaceable and permanent."[145]

In this volume (iv., p. 55) he remarks that the senses, whether in man
or in animals, may be greatly developed by exercise.

The impression left on the mind, after reading Buffon, is that even if
he threw out these suggestions and then retracted them, from fear of
annoyance or even persecution from the bigots of his time, he did not
himself always take them seriously, but rather jotted them down as
passing thoughts. Certainly he did not present them in the formal,
forcible, and scientific way that Erasmus Darwin did. The result is that
the tentative views of Buffon, which have to be with much research
extracted from the forty-four volumes of his works, would now be
regarded as in a degree superficial and valueless. But they appeared
thirty-four years before Lamarck's theory, and though not epoch-making,
they are such as will render the name of Buffon memorable for all time.

ETIENNE GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE.

Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire was born at Etampes, April 15, 1772. He
died in Paris in 1844. He was destined for the church, but his tastes
were for a scientific career. His acquaintance with the Abbe Hauey and
Daubenton led him to study mine