passage to stand as
follows:--

"_Although_ the different species of animals are separated from one
another by a space which Nature cannot overstep--_yet some of them
approach so nearly to one another in so many respects that there is only
room enough left for the getting in of a line of separation between
them_,"[57] and on the following page he distinctly encourages the idea
of the mutability of species in the following passage:--

"In place of regarding the ass as a degenerate horse, there would be
more reason in calling the horse a more perfect kind of ass (un ane
perfectionne), and the sheep a more delicate kind of goat, that we have
tended, perfected, and propagated for our use, and that the more perfect
animals in general--especially the domestic animals--_draw their origin
from some less perfect species of that kind of wild animal which they
most resemble. Nature alone not being able to do as much as Nature and
man can do in concert with one another_."[58]

But Buffon had long ago declared that if the horse and the ass could be
considered as being blood relations there was no stopping short of the
admission that all animals might also be blood relations--that is to
say, descended from common ancestors--and now he tells us that the ass
and horse _are_ in all probability descended from common ancestors. Will
a reader of any literary experience hold that so laborious, and yet so
witty a writer, and one so studious of artistic effect, could ignore the
broad lines he had laid down for himself, or forget how what he had said
would bear on subsequent passages, and subsequent passages on it? A less
painstaking author than Buffon may yet be trusted to remember his own
work well enough to avoid such literary bad workmanship as this. If
Buffon had seen reason to change his mind he would have said so, and
would have contradicted the inference he had originally pronounced to be
deducible from an admission of kinship between the ass and the horse.
This, it is hardly necessary to say, he never does, though he frequently
thinks it well to remind his reader of the fact that the ass and the
horse are in all probability closely related. This is bringing two and
two together with sufficient closeness for all practical purposes.

Should not M. Geoffroy's question, then, have rather been "Who has ever
pronounced more grudgingly, even in an early volume, &c., &c., and who
has more completely neutralized whatever concession he migh