1. Pierre Flourens, Buffon: Histoire de ses travaux et de ses idées (Paris, 1844), the only full-scale study of Buffon's thought, focuses on those aspects of Buffon's science relevant to the later zoology of Cuvier. The literature discussing Buffon and Darwin is extensive. Arthur Lovejoy, ?Buffon and the Concept of Species,? in Bentley Glass, ed., Forerunners of Darwin (Baltimore, 1959), reviews the multitudinous opinions concerning Buffon's relationship to Darwin vis-à-vis the mutability of species and lays most of them to rest by his careful analysis of the essential differences between Buffon's and Darwin's concepts. Jacques Roger, in his Les Sciences de la vie dans la pensée française du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1963), also decidedly challenges the more traditional account of Buffon's species concept. In this work, Roger discusses Buffon's role as a Newtonian naturalist and describes the general outline of the development of Buffon's ideas on species. Roger suggests that Buffon's ideas evolved on several different levels?classification, biology, the interpretation of life?and that this explains his changing statements. The following account will attempt to illustrate a more integrated development of Buffon's thoughts on species and to suggest a more important historical role.
2. Buffon's Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, published between 1749 and 1789, was divided into four sections: Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, auec la description du Cabinet du Roy (15 vols., 1749?1767), Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (9 vols., 1770?1783), Supplément à l'Histoire naturelle (7 vols., 1774?1789), and the Histoire naturelle des mineraux (5 vols., 1783?1788). Where possible, it is advisable to use this first edition. The use of later editions requires extreme care, for many of them are incomplete, notwithstanding titles such as Oeuvres complètes, etc. Moreover, numerous nineteenth-century printings (there are over fifty-one in French alone) were updated to accommodate new discoveries or ?improvements? such as Linnacus' classification, Cuvier's classification, or notes by nineteenth-century biologists. The best later edition is J. L. Lanessan, ed., Oeuvres complètes de Buffon (Paris, 1884?1885), which contains Buffon's collected correspondence. Where possible I have quoted from Jean Piveteau, ed., Oeuvres philosophiques de Buffon (Paris, 1965), (hereafter referred to as O.P.) the most readily available source for consultation. All other references are to the first edition (hereafter referred to as Histoire naturelle).
3. O.P., p. 10. Translations are by the author.
4. As early as 1744 Buffon had been preparing some sort of critique and in 1745 he wrote to a correspondent in Geneva that he planned to publish it in the first volume of his proposed natural history. For the letter, see EugèneRitter, ?Lettres de Buffon et de Maupertuis adressées à Jalabert,? Revue d'histoire littéraire de France, 8 (1901), 653.
5. For a general discussion of this concept, see Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, 1936). For a discussion of the concept in eighteenth-century biology, see Henri Daudin, De Linné à Jussieu. Les méthodes de la classification et l'idée de série en botanique et en zoologie (1740?1790) (Paris, 1926).