creatures." He believed that species have altered, due to changes in the environment in past ages of the world; and he hinted that there may have been a common ancestor of the ass and horse, and of the ape and man.
I don't object, not I, to know
My sires were monkeys, if 'twas so,
I touch my ear's collusive tip,
And own the poor relationship.
J. R. Lowell.
Buffon was an evolutionist, and the most "suggestive naturalist of the eighteenth century." During the same century there was great enthusiasm for natural history, as the following names, among others, bear evidence Rœsel, De Geer, Schäffer, Réaumur, and Bonnet.
Buffon anticipated many important theories, such as "the struggle for existence," "artificial and natural selection," "geographical isolation," "descent," and the action of the environment in producing structural changes which were preserved by heredity. Although faulty in many of his ideas, Buffon helped to pave the way to the modern theory of evolution.
Of his foibles, it may be mentioned that he was personally vain—turbine raptus ingenii; so were the most eminent writers, Voltaire and Rousseau, of the age of Louis XV. He was fond of jewellery and gold-laced clothes, and in his you rig days he was a dandy, as far as dress was concerned. He said of himself: "I know but five great geniuses, Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and
