Mr. Charles Darwin.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] 'Hist. Nat. Gen.,' vol. ii. p. 385, 1859.

[34] 'History of the World,' bk. i. ch. vii. Sec. 9 ('Athenaeum,' March 27,
1875).

[35] 'History of Creation,' vol. i. p. 91.

[36] 'History of Creation,' bk. i. ch. iii. (H. S. King, 1876).

CHAPTER VIII.

BUFFON--MEMOIR.

Buffon, says M. Flourens, was born at Montbar, on the 7th of September,
1707; he died in Paris, at the Jardin du Roi, on the 16th of April,
1788, aged 81 years. More than fifty of these years, as he used himself
to say, he had passed at his writing-desk. His father was a councillor
of the parliament of Burgundy. His mother was celebrated for her wit,
and Buffon cherished her memory.

He studied at Dijon with much _eclat_, and shortly after leaving became
accidentally acquainted with the Duke of Kingston, a young Englishman of
his own age, who was travelling abroad with a tutor. The three travelled
together in France and Italy, and Buffon then passed some months in
England.

Returning to France, he translated Hales's 'Vegetable Statics' and
Newton's 'Treatise on Fluxions.' He refers to several English writers on
natural history in the course of his work, but I see he repeatedly
spells the English name Willoughby, "Willulghby." He was appointed
superintendent of the Jardin du Roi in 1739, and from thenceforth
devoted himself to science.

In 1752 Buffon married Mdlle. de Saint Belin, whose beauty and charm of
manner were extolled by all her contemporaries. One son was born to
him, who entered the army, became a colonel, and I grieve to say, was
guillotined at the age of twenty-nine, a few days only before the
extinction of the Reign of Terror.

Of this youth, who inherited the personal comeliness and ability of his
father, little is recorded except the following story. Having fallen
into the water and been nearly drowned when he was about twelve years
old, he was afterwards accused of having been afraid: "I was so little
afraid," he answered, "that though I had been offered the hundred years
which my grandfather lived, I would have died then and there, if I could
have added one year to the life of my father;" then thinking for a
minute, a flush suffused his face, and he added, "but I should petition
for one quarter of an hour in which to exult over the thought of what I
was about to do."

On the scaffold he showed much composure, smiling half proudly, half
reproachfully, yet wholly kindly upon the