BUFFON, GEORGES-LOUIS LECLERC, COMTE DE (b. Montbard, France, 7 September 1707; d. Paris, France, 16 April 1788); natural history.

    of the same species that which by means of copulation perpetuates itself and preserves the similarity of that species” (ibid., Histoire des animaux, p. 236A). If the product of such mating is sterile, as is the mule, the parents are of different species. Any other criterion, particularly resemblance, is insufficient “because the mule resembles the horse more than the water spaniel resembles the greyhound” (ibid., Histoire naturelle de l'âne, p. 356A).

If the species exists in nature, the family does not: “. . . one must not forget that these families are our creation, we have devised them only to comfort our own minds” (ibid., p. 355B). All classification is therefore arbitrary and has no merit other than convenience. Buffon violently attacked Linneaus and praised Tournefort. He himself followed an order that he believed to be “easier, pleasanter, and more useful” than any other, without being any more arbitrary—“taking the objects that are the most interesting to us because of their relation to us, and gradually moving toward those that are more distant” (ibid., Sur la manière . . . , p. 17B). In the order Buffon followed, the dog follows the horse because, in reality, the dog “is accustomed, in fact, to [so] follow” (ibid., p. 18A). Buffon's order is formed by a philosophical bias rather than by science.

For Buffon to admit the concept of family, it would have to correspond to a reality. Thus:

If these families really existed, they could have been formed only through the crossing, successive variation, and degeneration of original species; and if one once concedes that there are families of both plants and animals, that the donkey is of the horse family and only differs because it has degenerated, one could also say that the monkey is a member of the family of man and is merely a degenerated man, that man and monkey have a common origin just like the horse and mule, that each family . . . has only one founder and even that all animals came from one single animal which, with the passage of time, by simultaneously perfecting itself and degenerating, produced all of the races of the other animals [ibid., Histoire naturelle de l'âne, p. 355B-356A].

Because he rejected the concept of family and denied the value of making classifications, Buffon also rejected, at the beginning of his work, the hypothesis of generalized transformism offered by Maupertuis in 1751 in the Système de la nature. Buffon's theory of reproduction and the role he attributes to the “internal mold,” as the guardian of the form of the species, prevented him from being a transformist.

This same theory of reproduction did not prevent Buffon from believing in the appearance of varieties within a species, however. Buffon believed in the heredity of acquired characteristics; climate, food, and domestication modify the animal type. From his exhaustive research for the Histoire naturelle des quadrupèdes, Buffon came to the conclusion that it was necessary to reintroduce the notion of family. But he attributes to this word—or to the word genus, which he also uses—a special meaning: a family consists of animals which although separated by “nature,” instinct, life style, or geographical habitat are nevertheless able to produce viable young (that is, animals which belong biologically to the same species, e.g., the wolf and the dog). What the naturalist terms species and family, then, will thus become, for the biologist, variety and species. Buffon was thus able to write, in 1766, the essay De la dégénération des animaux—in which he showed himself to be a forerunner of Lamarck—while he continued to affirm the permanence of species in the two Vues de la nature (1764-1765) and Époques de la nature (1779).

Buffon's final point of view concerning the history of living beings can be summarized as follows: No sooner were organic molecules formed than they spontaneously grouped themselves to form living organisms. Many of these organisms have since disappeared, either because they were unable to subsist or because they were unable to reproduce. The others, which responded successfully to the essential demands of life, retained a basically similar constitution—Buffon affirms unity in the plan of animals' composition and, in variations on that plan, the principle of the subordination of organs. Since the earth was very hot and “nature was in its first stage of activity,” the first creatures able to survive were extremely large. The earth's cooling drove them from the North Pole toward the equator and then finally caused their extinction. Buffon offered this in explanation of the giant fossils discovered in Europe and North America, which he studied at length (to the point of becoming one of the founders of paleontology). The organic molecules which were left free in the northern regions formed smaller creatures which in turn moved toward the equator, and then a third and fourth generation, which also moved south. Originating in Siberia, these animal species spread out to southern Europe and Africa, and toward southern Asia and North America. Only South America had an original fauna, different from that of other continents.

In the process of migration, the species varied in response to environment. There are few varieties of the large mammals because they reproduce slowly. The smaller mammals (rodents, for example) offer a large number of varieties because they are very prolific. The same is true of birds. Going back to the basic types, quadrupeds may be divided into thirteen