des in organic molecules. "Living beings are
made up of these molecules, which exist in countless numbers, which may
be separated but cannot be destroyed, which pierce into brute matter,
and, working there, develop, it may be animals, it may be plants,
according to the nature of the matter in which they are lodged. These
indestructible molecules circulate throughout the universe, pass from
one being to another, minister to the continuance of life, provide for
nutrition and the growth of the individual, and determine the
reproduction of the species."

Buffon further taught that the quantity and quality of life pass from
lower to higher stages--in Tennysonian phrase, men "rise on
stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things"--and showed the
unity and structure of all beings, of whom man is the most perfect type.

It has been claimed that Buffon in a measure anticipated Lamarck and
Darwin. He had already foreseen the mutability of species, but had not
succeeded in proving it for varieties and races. If he asserted that the
species of dog, jackal, wolf and fox were derived from a single one of
these species, that the horse came from the zebra, and so on, this was
far from being tantamount to a demonstration of the doctrine. In fact,
he put forward the mutability of species rather as probable theory than
as established truth, deeming it the corollary of his views on the
succession and connection of beings in a continuous series.

Some case may be made out for regarding Buffon as the founder of
zoogeography; at all events he was the earliest to determine the natural
habitat of each species. He believed that species changed with climate,
but that no kind was found throughout all the globe. Man alone has the
privilege of being everywhere and always the same, because the human
race is one. The white man (European or Caucasian), the black man
(Ethiopian), the yellow man (Mongol), and the red man (American) are
only varieties of the human species. As the Scots express it with wonted
pith, "We're a' Jock Tamson's bairns."

As to his geological works, Buffon expounded two theories of the
formation of the globe. In his "Theorie de la Terre" he supported the
Neptunists, who attributed the phenomena of the earth to the action of
water. In his "Epoques de la Nature" he amplified the doctrines of
Leibniz, and laid down the following propositions: (1) The earth is
elevated at the equator and depressed at the poles in accordanc