Buffon

Buffon, George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, who did more perhaps than any other one man to popularise the study of zoology in the last century, was born at Montbard, Burgundy, in 1707. He studied law under the Jesuits at Dijon, and showed great taste for mathematics, and patience in investigation. In company with Lord Kingston he travelled in Italy and studied at Angers. He translated Newton's Fluxions and Hales' Vegetable Statics into French, and, being possessed of considerable private means, employed an amanuensis in his study of mathematics, physics, and agriculture. In 1739 he was chosen a member of the Academy of Sciences and keeper of the Jardin du Roi and Museum, so that Paris became his home, and there he died in 1788. Though having himself but a slight knowledge of anatomy and neither knowledge of nor liking for system, the scheme of his great descriptive Histoire Naturelle, which was at first published in forty-four quarto volumes, was more comprehensive than any that had preceded it. The first three volumes were published in 1749, and in the first fifteen Buffon had the assistance of Daubenton. a profound anatomist, whilst the last eight volumes, dealing with reptiles, fish, and cetacea, were published by Lacepede, after the death of their projector. Button's bold speculations as to the gradual cooling of the planetary system and the adaptation of our earth as it cooled to successive groups of organisms give him a permanent place in the history of biology.