Georges Louis Lederc Buffon, count de, a French naturalist, born at Montbard, in Burgundy, Sept. 7, 1707, died in Paris, April 16, 1788. He was the son of Benjamin Leclerc, counsellor of the parliament of Dijon, and was educated for the bar. At the age of 20 he joined a young English nobleman, the duke of Kingston, who was travelling with his tutor. They visited many parts of France, Switzerland, and Italy, during a period of 18 months; and from this time Buffon resolved to devote himself to the pursuit of science. He visited London, where he studied English, and translated Newton's treatise on fluxions from the Latin, and Hales's " Vegetable Statics " from the English. The two manuscripts were presented to the academy of sciences of Paris, and favorably received, the first being printed in 1735, and the second in 1740, with the approbation of the academy. In 1739 he was elected member of the academy of sciences, and during the same year appointed director of the jar din du roi, now the jardin des plantcs. This appointment called his attention more exclusively to natural history, and he resolved to continue the work commenced by Aristotle and Pliny, in describing the organic and inorganic forms of nature on our globe.

With this view he enlisted the cooperation of Dau-benton in the anatomical and scientific portions of the work, reserving to himself the external forms, habits, instincts, and geographical distribution of the animal kingdom. Daubenton and Buffon worked together diligently some ten years, and in 1749 the first three volumes of the "Natural History" appeared, twelve more volumes following at intervals between 1749 and 1767. Few works have ever met with such success; the study of natural science, and particularly natural history, became universally attractive. Buffon's " Theory of the Earth " enlisted numerous admirers among the more imaginative readers of his works, but was rejected by those of cooler judgment. His general views of the animal creation and the natural history of man were more successful, and his ideas of the relation between form and substance have been demonstrated scientifically by the experiments of Flourens on the gradual appearance and disappearance of coloring matter in the bones of living animals. " That which is the most constant and unalterable in nature," says Buffon, "is the type or form of each species; that which is the most variable and corruptible is the matter or the substance which clothes the form;" and this has been experimentally proved by Flourens, in addition to the evidence of daily nutrition and loss of substance in every individual organism.

Buffon's eloquent description of the gradual development of the human organism, and the concomitant unfolding of sensation and the faculties of thought and reason, is a masterpiece of observation and delineation. The first class of animals described by Buffon was the quadrupeds; the second, birds; and here, with regard to the animal kingdom, his labors ceased. The " History of Domestic Animals " was published between 1753 and 1756; that of the carnivorous tribes and other wild species between 1758 and 1767, describing more than 3,000 species and varieties. The "History of Birds" was published between 1770 and 1781. Daubenton then retired from the work, and Buffon obtained the cooperation of Gueneau de Mont-beliard, the abbe Bexon, and Sonnini de Ma-noncourt. The " History of Minerals" was published between 1783 and 1785, and the " Epochs of Nature " in 1788. The style is always good, and the illustrations rich with imagery, but the theories become more and more hypothetical and vague. His ideas, however, paved the way for his successors, Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who laid the foundations of true science in these branches of investigation.

The mind of Buffon was not so analytical and accurate as that of Cuvier; not so keen in the perception of remote relations between normal and abnormal types of organism as that of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire; but he had more poetical views of truth and beauty than either, and deeper intuitions of the unitary laws of nature, physical, instinctual, and rational. His works have been reprinted many times in France, and rendered into most of the languages of Christendom. The best edition of the Histoire naturelle was issued from the royal printing establishment in 36 vols. 4to, 1749-88. There is an edition from the same press in 73 vols. 12mo, begun in 1752, with a continuation in 17 vols, by Lacepede. There is an abridgment by Castel, in 26 vols. 18mo. - Buffon left one son, Henri Leclerc, born in 1764, who erected a monument to his father in the gardens of Montbard, and who died by the guillotine during the revolution.