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the Buffalo female academy, and the academy of the Holy Angels (Roman Catholic) are among the other educational institutions of the city. The young men's association has a circulating library of more than 25,000 volumes, and owns real estate valued at from $150,000 to $200,000, including St. James hall, the most popular audience room in the city, in which the regular winter lectures of the association are held. The large library building of the association, adjacent to the hall, is also occupied by the Buffalo historical society, the society of natural sciences, the academy of fine arts, and the mechanics' institute. The historical society has accumulated a large library and cabinet. The society of natural sciences possesses a very complete and valuable collection of minerals, presented by Charles Wadsworth, a good botanical and conchological cabinet, and a complete set of Prof. Ward's fossil casts. The academy of fine arts has been put upon a firm footing by a recent endowment, and is rapidly founding a very fine gallery of painting and sculpture. The mechanics' institute is building up a good library, and is in a flourishing condition. The young men's Christian union, the German young men's association, and the Catholic young men's association are founding libraries for the use of their members. The Grosvenor library is a public library for reference, founded by a bequest of Seth Grosvenor of New York. It was opened in 1871, and contained in 1873 about 10,000 volumes, chiefly important books not easy of access elsewhere. The foundation fund of the library is ample to make it in a few years one of the foremost of its character in the country.—There are published in the city 9 daily newspapers, 5 in English and 4 in German; 10 weeklies, of which 3 are religious and sectarian; and 7 monthlies. There are 76 churches, viz.: 18 Roman Catholic, 11 German Lutheran and Evangelical, 10 Episcopal, 10 Methodist, 9 Presbyterian, 8 Baptist, 4 Mission, 2 Jewish, 1 French Protestant, 1 Unitarian, 1 Universalist, and 1 Friends'. The Forest Lawn cemetery, in the suburbs of the city, contains 75 acres.—Buffalo was founded by the Holland land company, which owned a large tract of land in western New York, in 1801. It became a military post in 1812 during the war between the United States and England, and in 1814 was burned by a force of Indians and British. After the close of the war the village was rebuilt, and it was incorporated as a city in 1832. Its growth was not rapid until the opening of the Erie canal in 1825, which gave a great impetus to western emigration, to the settlement and development of the northwest, and to travel and traffic on the lakes. Buffalo then became the distributing centre of the trade between the east and the west. In 1853 Black Rock, a village on the Niagara river 2 m. below Buffalo, was incorporated with it.
BUFFIER, Claude, a French author, born in Poland of French parents, May 25, 1661, died in Paris, May 17, 1737. He was educated at Rouen, entered the society of Jesus in 1679, and spent the greater part of his life in teaching at the collége Louis le Grand. His principal writings on grammar, literature, science, and theology are found in his Cours de sciences sur des principes nouveaux et simples (Paris, 1732), the most esteemed being the Traité des premières vérités. A separate edition of his remarkable Grammaire française sur un plan nouveau appeared subsequently. The Encyclopédie méthodique appropriated many of his writings without credit. He wrote various historical and other works, and in his Pratique de la mémoire artificielle (4 vols., Paris, 1701-'15) he applied Lancelot's method to the study of chronology, history, and geography.
BUFF LEATHER, a strong soft preparation of bull's or elk's hide, which was worn under the mail armor of the middle ages, to deaden the effect of a blow. As armor fell into disuse, buff coats, which would turn a broadsword cut, and even a pistol ball, were often worn in lieu of complete steel, either with or without a cuirass and gorget of metal. Modern buff leather, of which soldiers' crossbelts and other accoutrements are frequently made, is for the most part made of common buckskin.
BUFFON, Georges Louis Leclerc, count de, a French naturalist, born at Montbard, in Burgundy, Sept. 7, 1707, died in Paris, April 16, 1788. He was the son of Benjamin Leclerc, counsellor of the parliament of Dijon, and was educated for the bar. At the age of 20 he joined a young English nobleman, the duke of Kingston, who was travelling with his tutor. They visited many parts of France, Switzerland, and Italy, during a period of 18 months; and from this time Buffon resolved to devote himself to the pursuit of science. He visited London, where he studied English, and translated Newton's treatise on fluxions from the Latin, and Hales's “Vegetable Statics” from the English. The two manuscripts were presented to the academy of sciences of Paris, and favorably received, the first being printed in 1735, and the second in 1740, with the approbation of the academy. In 1739 he was elected member of the academy of sciences, and during the same year appointed director of the jardin du roi, now the jardin des plantes. This appointment called his attention more exclusively to natural history, and he resolved to continue the work commenced by Aristotle and Pliny, in describing the organic and inorganic forms of nature on our globe. With this view he enlisted the cooperation of Daubenton in the anatomical and scientific portions of the work, reserving to himself the external forms, habits, instincts, and geographical distribution of the animal kingdom. Daubenton and Buffon worked together diligently some ten years, and in 1749 the first three volumes of the “Natural History” appeared, twelve more volumes following at intervals between 1749 and 1767. Few works have ever met
