Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/470

466 only individuals?" (5) Dacqué, in what is at many points the least inaccurate of the histories of evolutionism, declares that Buffon brought forward no more profound ideas than his contemporaries "upon the interconnection of the phenomena of organic nature," though he did something to clarify the conception of geological evolution, and "regarded species as variable within certain limits." (6) The writer who (so far as I know) has most recently discussed the subject, Landrieu, seems finally to give up as hopeless the attempt to reduce Buffon's utterances to harmony and coherency. He adds, however, that in spite of these inconsistencies, "Buffon retains the indisputable honor of having been the first zoologist to admit the possibility of specific variations due to environmental influences and extending beyond the limits of species."

All of these accounts of the matter seem to me to be either inadequate or erroneous, though all may be said in some measure to be founded on fact. Most of them—especially of the more recent ones—wholly ignore two essential considerations in relation to Buffon's biological conceptions, in the light of which all that he wrote must be interpreted. In attempting to present a more adequate and more correct analysis of Buffon's opinions, I shall be obliged to tax the reader's patience with many and lengthy citations. Where there has been so much disagreement, it is necessary to present the proofs for nearly every statement propounded. And where so much error has arisen through the citation of brief passages in disregard of their contexts, it is important that pains be taken to quote or summarize so much of each text as appears to be in any way relevant to the question under consideration.

1. The first volume of the great treatise (1749) opened with a preliminary disquisition on the methodology of the science, a "Discours de la manière d'étudier et de traiter l'histoire naturelle." In this Buffon gave a salutary emphasis to the demand for a more "philosophical" way of studying botany and zoology than had been exemplified by Linnæus and Tournefort and the other great systematists. Description and classification, Buffon insisted, were the least part, though a necessary part, of "natural history."

We ought to try to rise to something greater and still more worthy of occupying us—that is to say, to combine observations, to generalize the facts,