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 1707-17781788 [sic]

INNÆUS and Buffon were born and died in the same years; this identity of dates, and the importance of the services which they rendered to natural history, are the only similitudes in their lives. Linnæus was poor, extremely poor; the poverty of which Marie Corelli speaks in The Sorrows of Satan: while Buffon was the scion of a noble and rich family.

Georges Louis Le Clerc (Comte de Buffon) was born at Montbard, in Burgundy, on 7th September 1707, and at school displayed a great liking for mathematics and astronomy.

It was in 1727, while travelling in Italy, that he received the news of his mother's death. This event placed him in possession of £12,000 a year; but he did not settle on his estate until he reached the age of twenty-five. On his return to his ancestral home, he resolutely followed a course of study and research for fifty years. His studies were pursued at a building situated at the extremity of his beautiful garden. This 137