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A Monument of Natural History, Complete With Three Hundred one Plates, From The Greatest Naturalist Before Darwin
Offered With Reserve
is
1781 First London Edition of
Natural History
By
Georges-Louis LeClerc, Le Comte de Buffon
Printed in London For W. Strahan and T Cadell and In Edinburgh For W. Creech
Translated by William Smellie, Editor of The First edition of Encyclopedia Britannica
Complete in all Respects With Three Hundred One Plates, Including Six Fold out Plates and Frontispiece Portrait of the Author
In Very Good Condition Bound in Full English Calf, With Excellent Impressions of the Plates
Full Details
The full title reads as follows:
“Natural History, General and Particular, / By the Count de Buffon, Translated into English. Illustrated with three hundred and on Copper-Plates and occasional Notes and Observations by the Translator. / … / London: Printed for W. Strahan and T Cadell; and W. Creech, Edinburgh. M, DCC, LXXXI. [1781]”
This volume may be referenced in the ESTC Citation # N42265
The Volumes are in Very Good Condition They are bound in full English Calf, contemporary to the time of publication, with gilt board edges and the spines divided into six compartments by six gilt bands, with a red morocco letter-piece in the second compartment from the top and gilt volume number in the third. Externally, each volume shows some splitting along one or both hinges, which hold well regardless, with corners bumped and light general scuffing and a split forming in the spine of volume 7, which has loosened a couple of gathers a little. Internally the leaves are generally clean and well margined, with some very light occasional foxing, and repairs to volume 1 Pp. 513/514, a wormhole in volume 2 from Pp. 459 to the rear board, and a consistent marginal wormhole for the whole of volume 6, which never affects texts or the impressions of the plates. Please Take The Time Necessary To Review The Photographs On Our Website In Order To Gain The Fullest Possible Understanding Of The Content And Condition Of This Volume.
The Volumes are Complete In All Respects With three hundred one Plates, with six folding plates at the end of the final volume and frontispiece as well as news clippings concerning india pasted on pages between 152 and 168 of volume five, on blank spaces next to the section on the Tiger. The volumes are paginated as follows: Vol 1; [2], [i], xxi, [xxiv], [1], 514: Vol 2; [iv], [1], 517: Vol 3; [iii], iv, [viii], [1], 524: Vol 4; [iii], vii, [viii], [1], 352: Vol 5; [iii], vi, [vii], [1], 440: Vol 6; [iv], [1], 443: Vol 7; [iii], vii, [viii], [1], 452: Vol 8; [iii], v, [ix], [1], 352: Vol 9; [iii], viii, [1], 422. Each volume measures about 22 cm. By 14 cm. By 3.5 cm. Each leaf measures about 210 mm. by 125 mm.
Provenance: Bookplate, on the paste-down of each volume, of John Cayley, as well as inscriptions dated 1798
Except for Aristotle and Darwin, no other student of organisms [whole animals and plants] has had as far-reaching an influence.
- Ernst Mayr
Of Buffon’s Natural History
Georges Louis Leclerc (later Comte de Buffon) was born at Montbard, in the Province of Burgundy to Benjamin Leclerc, a minor local official in charge of the salt tax and Anne-Christine Marlin also from a family of civil servants. In 1714 his godfather died childless, leaving a considerable fortune to his seven-year-old godson. Benjamin Leclerc then purchased an estate containing the nearby village of Buffon and moved the family to Dijon acquiring various offices there as well as a seat in the Dijon Parlement. Georges attended the Jesuit College of Godrans in Dijon from the age of ten onwards. From 1723–1726 he then studied law in Dijon, the prerequisite for continuing the family tradition in civil service. In 1728 Georges left Dijon to study mathematics and medicine at the University of Angers in France. At Angers in 1730 he made the acquaintance of the young English Duke of Kingston, who was on his grand tour of Europe, and traveled with him and a large and expensive entourage for a year and a half through southern France and parts of Italy. Having added 'de Buffon' to his name while traveling with the Duke, he repurchased the village of Buffon, which his father had meanwhile sold off. With a fortune of about 80 000 livres Buffon set himself up in Paris to pursue science, at first primarily mathematics and mechanics, and the increase of his fortune.
In 1732 he moved to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire and other intellectuals. He first made his mark in the field of mathematics and, in his Sur le jeu de franc-carreau, introduced differential and integral calculus into probability theory; the problem of Buffon's needle in probability theory is named after him. In 1734 he was admitted to the French Academy of Sciences. During this period he corresponded with the Swiss mathematician Gabriel Cramer. His protector Maurepas had asked the Academy of Sciences to do research on wood for the construction of ships in 1733. Soon afterward, Buffon began a long-term study, performing some of the most comprehensive tests to date on the mechanical properties of wood. Included were a series of tests to compare the properties of small specimens with those of large members. After carefully testing more than a thousand small specimens without knots or other defects, Buffon concluded that it was not possible to extrapolate to the properties of full-size timbers, and he began a series of tests on full-size structural members.
In 1739 he was appointed head of the Parisian Jardin du Roi with the help of Maurepas; he held this position to the end of his life. Buffon was instrumental in transforming the Jardin du Roi into a major research center and museum. He also enlarged it, arranging the purchase of adjoining plots of land and acquiring new botanical and zoological specimens from all over the world.
The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr comments that "In this monumental and fascinating Histoire naturelle, Buffon dealt in a stimulating manner with almost all the problems that would subsequently be raised by evolutionists. Written in a brilliant style, this work was read in French or in one of the numerous translations by every educated person in Europe". Mayr argued that "virtually all the well-known writers of the Enlightenment" were "Buffonians", and calls Buffon "the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the eighteenth century".
Mayr notes that Buffon was not an "evolutionist", but was certainly responsible for creating the great amount of interest in natural history in France. He agrees that Buffon's thought is hard to classify and even self-contradictory, and that the theologians forced him to avoid writing some of his opinions openly. Mayr argues however that Buffon was "fully aware of the possibility of 'common descent', and was perhaps the first author ever to articulate it clearly", quoting Buffon at length, starting with "Not only the ass and the horse, but also man, the apes, the quadrupeds, and all the animals might be regarded as constituting but a single family", and later "that man and ape have a common origin", and that "the power of nature...with sufficient time, she has been able from a single being to derive all the other organized beings". Mayr notes, however, that Buffon immediately rejects the suggestion and offers three arguments against it, namely that no new species have arisen in historical times; that hybrid infertility firmly separates species; and that animals intermediate between, say, the horse and the donkey are not seen (in the fossil record).
William Smellie was a Scottish master printer, naturalist, antiquary, editor and encyclopedist. He was friends with Robert Burns, and the editor of the first edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
At the age of 28, Smellie was hired by Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell to edit the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, which appeared in 100 weekly instalments ("numbers") from December 1768 to 1771. It was a masterful composition although, by his own admission, Smellie borrowed liberally from many authors of his day, such as Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson. Smellie entertained strong opinions; for example, he defines farriery as "the art of curing the diseases of horses. The practice of this useful art has been hitherto almost entirely confined to a set of men who are totally ignorant of anatomy, and the general principles of medicine." Although possessed of wide knowledge, Smellie was not an expert in all matters; for example, his article on "Woman" has but four words: "the female of man." Despite its incompleteness and inaccuracies, Smellie's vivid prose and the easy navigation of the first edition led to strong demand for a second; some prurient engravings by Andrew Bell (later censored by King George III) may also have contributed to the success of the first edition. Smellie did not participate in the second edition of the Britannica, because he objected to the inclusion of biographical articles in an encyclopedia dedicated to the arts and sciences.
Smellie had enough to employ himself with. He edited a weekly called the Scot's Journal, which made him familiar with the editing and publication of a work in parts. Smellie continued to publish a wide variety of works, including his two-volume Philosophy of Natural History, which became a set text at Harvard University in the nineteenth century, and at least two of the four-volume set of Thesaurus medicus: sive, disputationum, in Academia Edinensi, ad rem medicam pertinentium, a collegio instituto ad hoc usque tempus, delectu which reprinted Edinburgh medical theses of the 18th century. In 1779, Smellie was nominated to be the University of Edinburgh's Professor of Natural History; however, the post was awarded to Dr. John Walker, allegedly due to politics. By 1780 Smellie Produced the first complete translation of Histoire Naturelle, by Buffon.
Interestingly, Smellie was self taught in reading and writing French, and could hardly speak the language at all. This was the subject of some fascination when an associate of Buffon waited on Smellie in Edinburgh, only to find that while he understood French perfectly, he could scarcely pronounce a word of it himself. It was but a curiosity to Buffon, who was still impressed by the quality of the translation and even requested that Smellie translate some of his other works, though Smellie would have to decline for practical reasons. Smellie was otherwise well suited to translating the topic
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