Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/423

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BUTTON BUGEAUD 417 with such success ; the study of natural science, and particularly natural history, became uni- versally attractive. Buffon's " Theory of the Earth " enlisted numerous admirers among the more imaginative readers of his works, but was rejected by those of cooler judgment. His general views of the animal creation and the natural history of man were more successful, and his ideas of the relation between form and substance have been demonstrated scientifical- ly by the experiments of Flourens on the grad- ual appearance and disappearance of coloring matter in the bones of living animals. " That which is the most constant and unalterable in nature," says Buffon, "is the type or form of each species ; that which is the most variable and corruptible is the matter or the substance which clothes the form ; " and this has been experimentally proved by Flourens, in addition to the evidence of daily nutrition and loss of substance in every individual organism. Buf- fon's eloquent description of the gradual devel- opment of the human organism, and the con- comitant unfolding of sensation and the faculties of thought and reason, is a masterpiece of ob- servation and delineation. The first class of animals described by Buffon was the quadru- peds ; the second, birds ; and here, with regard to the animal kingdom, his labors ceased. The " History of Domestic Animals " was published between 1753 and 1756; that of the carnivo- rous tribes and other wild species between 1758 and 1767, describing more than 3,000 species and varieties. The "History of Birds" was published between 1770 and 1781. Daubenton then retired from the work, and Buffon ob- tained the cooperation of Gu6neau de Mont- beliard, the abbe Bexon, and Sonnini de Ma- noncourt. The " History of Minerals " was published between 1783 and 1785, and the " Epochs of Nature " in 1788. The style is always good, and the illustrations rich with imagery, but the theories become more and more hypothetical. and vague. His ideas, how- ever, paved the way for his successors, Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who laid the foun- dations of true science in these branches of investigation. The mind of Buffon was not so analytical and accurate as that of Cuvier ; not so keen in the perception of remote relations between normal and abnormal types of organism as that of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire ; but he had more poetical views of truth and beauty than either, and deeper intuitions of the unitary laws of nature, physical, instinctual, and ration- al. His works have been reprinted many times in France, and rendered into most of the lan- guages of Christendom. The best edition of the Histoire naturelle was issued from the royal printing establishment in 36 vols. 4to, 1749-'88. There is an edition from the same press in 73 vols. 12mo, begun in 1752, with a continuation in 17 vols. by Lac6pede. There is an abridgment by Castel, in 26 vols. 18mo. Buffon left one son, HENRI LECLEEO, born in 1764, who erected a monument to his father in the gardens of Montbard, and who died by the guillotine during the revolution. BUG. See HEMIPTEEA. BUG. I. A. river of western Russia, rises in Galicia, flows N. and N. W., forming for a con- siderable distance the E. boundary of the Rus- sian kingdom of Poland, then enters Poland, flows S. W., and after receiving the Narew falls into the Vistula, 18 m. N. W. of Warsaw. Its entire course is upward of 300 m., and it is navigable for some distance, although shallow in summer. II. A river of southern Russia, more properly called Bog, rises in the north of Podolia, pursues a S. E. course of about 400 m., and below Nikolayev falls into the estuary of the Dnieper, which opens into the Black sea. It is navigable as far as Vosnosensk, about 75 m. from its mouth ; above that point it is obstructed by rocks and sand banks. BCGEAUD DE LA PICOMERIE, Thomas Robert, duke of Isly, a French soldier, born at Li- moges, Oct. 15, 1784, died in Paris, June 10, 1849. He entered the French army as a private in 1804, became a corporal in 1805, served as sub-lieutenant in the campaign of Prussia and Poland (1806-'7), was present in 1810 and 1811 as major at the sieges of Lerida, Tortosa, and Tarragona, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel after the battle of Ordal in Catalonia. After the return from Elba Napoleon sent him to the .army of the Alps in command of a regiment, which formed the advance guard of Suchet's corps. On the second return of the Bourbons he retired to a rural estate of his father. At the time of the invasion of Spain by the duke of Angouleme in 1823, he offered his sword to the Bourbons, but the offer being declined, he joined the op- position movement which finally led to the rev- olution of 1830. He was chosen a member of the chamber of deputies in 1831, and made a general of division by Louis Philippe. Appoint- ed governor of the citadel of Blaye in 1833, he had the duchess of Berry under his charge, and afterward became known by the name of the " ex-jailer of Blaye." He commanded one of the brigades by which the Paris insurrection of April 13-14, 1834, was suppressed, and be- came obnoxious to the populace. .He was sent in 1836 to Algeria, where he concluded the treaty of the Tafna, and in 1841 became gov- ernor general. The battle of Isly (Aug. 14, 1844), in which he vanquished the army of the emperor of Morocco with vastly inferior forces, owed its success to his taking the ene- my by surprise, without any previous declara- tion of war, and when negotiations were on the eve of being concluded. Already raised to the dignity of a marshal of France, July 17, 1843, Bugeaud was now created duke of Isly. Abd-el-Kader having after the marshal's return to France again collected an army, Bngeaud was sent back to Algeria, where he promptly crushed the revolt. In consequence of differ- ences between him and Guizot, occasioned by his expedition into Kabylia, he was superseded