founded with the tiger, leopard, ounce, &c., while, on the contrary, those species, which appear to be least distant from the lion, are very sufficiently indistinguishable, so that travellers and nomenclators are continually confounding them.” *

If this is not pure malice, never was a writer more persistently unfortunate in little ways. Why remind us here that the species which come nearest to the lion are so hard to distinguish? Why not have said nothing about it? As it is, the case stands thus: we are required to admit close resemblance between the leopard and the tiger, while we are to deny it between the tiger and the lion, in spite of there being no greater outward difference between the first than between the second pair, and in spite of the hurried whisper "cat with a mane and a long tail" still haunting our ears. Isidore Geoffroy and his followers may consent to this arrangement, but I hope the majority of my readers will not

do so.

I went on to the account of the tiger with some interest to see the line which Buffon would take concerning it. I anticipated that we should find cats, pumas, lynxes, &c., to be really very like tigers, and was surprised to learn that the "true" tiger, though certainly not unlike these animals, was still to be distinguished from "many others which had since been called tigers." He is on no account to be confounded with these, in spite of the obvious temptation to confound him. He is "a rare animal, little known to the ancients, and badly described by the moderns." He is *Tom. ix. p. 11, 1761.

a beast "of great ferocity, of terrible swiftness, and surpassing even the proportions of the lion." The effect of the description is that we no longer find the lion standing alone, but with the tiger on a par with him if not above him; but at the same time we fall easy victims to the temptation to confound the tiger with "the many other animals which are also called tigers." A surface stream has swept the members of the cat family in different directions, but a stealthy undercurrent has seized them from beneath, and they are now happily reunited.

Animals of the Old and New World-Changed

Geographical Distribution.

Writing upon the animals of the old world, and referring to the humps of the camel and the bison, Buffon shows that very considerable modification may be effected in some animals within even a few generations, but he attributes the modification to the direct influence of climate. Buffon concludes his sketch of the animals of the new world by pointing out that the larger animals of the African torrid zone have been hindered by sea and desert from finding their way to America, and by claiming to be the first "even to have suspected" that there was not a single denizen of the torrid zone of one continent which was common also to the other.†

The animals common to both continents are those which can stand the cold and which are generally suited for a temperate climate. These, Buffon believes, to * Tom. ix. p. 68, 1761. † Ibid. p. 96, 1761.

L

have travelled either over some land still unknown, or

66

more probably," over territory which has long since been submerged. The species of the old and new world are never without some well-marked difference, which however should not be held sufficient for us to refuse to admit their practical identity. But he maintains, I imagine wilfully, that there is a tendency in all the mammalia to become smaller on being transported to the new world, and refers the fact to the quality of the earth, the condition of the climate, the degrees of heat and humidity, to the height of mountains, amounts of running or stagnant waters, extent of forest, and above all to the brutal condition of nature in a new country, which he evidently regards with true aristocratic abhorrence.*

Then follows a passage which I had better perhaps give in full:

The mammoth 66 was certainly the greatest and strongest of all quadrupeds; but it has disappeared; and if so, how many smaller, feebler, and less remarkable species must have also perished without leaving us any traces or even hints of their having existed? How many other species have changed their nature, that is to say, become perfected or degraded, through great changes in the distribution of land and ocean, through the cultivation or neglect of the country which they inhabit, through the long-continued effects of climatic changes, so that they are no longer the same animals that they once were? Yet of all living beings after

* Tom. ix. p. 107 and following pages (during which he rails at the new world generally), 1761.

man, the quadrupeds are the ones whose nature is most fixed and form most constant: birds and fishes vary much more easily; insects still more again than these, and if we descend to plants, which certainly cannot be excluded from animated nature, we shall be surprised at the readiness with which species are seen to vary, and at the ease with which they change their forms and adopt new natures.

"It is probable then that all the animals of the new world are derived from congeners in the old, without any deviation from the ordinary course of nature. We may believe that having become separated in the lapse of ages, by vast oceans and countries which they could not traverse, they have gradually been affected by, and derived impressions from, a climate which has itself been modified so as to become a new one through the operation of those same causes which dissociated the individuals of the old and new world from one another; thus in the course of time they have grown smaller and changed their characters. This, however, should not prevent our classifying them as different species now, for the difference is no less real whether it is caused by time, climate and soil, or whether it dates from the creation. Nature I maintain is in a state of continual flux and movement. It is enough for man if he can grasp her as she is in his own time, and throw but a glance or two upon the past and future, so as to try and perceive what she may have been in former times and what one day she may attain to."* * Tom. ix. p. 127, 1761.

"differ

The Buffalo-Animals under Domestication. "The bison and the aurochs," says Buffon, only in unessential characteristics, and are, by consequence, of the same species as our domestic cattle, so that I believe all the pretended species of the ox, whether ancient or modern, may be reduced to three -the bull, the buffalo, and the bubalus.

"The case of animals under domestication is in many respects different from that of wild ones; they vary much more in disposition, size and shape, especially as regards the exterior parts of their bodies: the effects of climate, so powerful throughout nature, act with far greater effect upon captive animals than upon wild ones. Food prepared by man, and often ill chosen, combined with the inclemency of an uncongenial climate-these eventuate in modifications sufficiently profound to become constant and hereditary in successive generations. I do not pretend to say that this general cause of modification is so powerful as to change radically the nature of beings which have had their impress stamped upon them in that surest of moulds-heredity; but it nevertheless changes them in not a few respects; it masks and transforms their outward appearance; it suppresses some of their parts, and gives them new ones; it paints them with various colours, and by its action on bodily habits influences also their natures, instincts, and most inward qualities" (and what is this but "radically changing their nature"?). "The modification of but a single part, moreover, in a whole as perfect as an animal body, will necessitate a correla