Description
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, was an 18th-century French naturalist, mathematician, and cosmologist. He is known for his work in natural history, particularly his 36-volume “Histoire Naturelle,” which covered a wide range of topics including botany, geology, and zoology. He was a key figure in the development of the study of natural history and helped to lay the foundations of modern biological taxonomy.
His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent French scientists Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier. Buffon published thirty-six quarto volumes of his Histoire Naturelle during his lifetime, with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the two decades following his death.
Ernst Mayr wrote that “Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century”. Credited with being one of the first naturalists to recognize ecological succession, he was later forced by the theology committee at the University of Paris to recant his theories about geological history and animal evolution because they contradicted the Biblical narrative of Creation.
These books are the Théorie de la terre – Les quadrupèdes, a separate section of Histoire Naturelle
Book 1: Histoire Naturelle Théorie de la terre – Histoire génerale des animaux (686p.) + many lithographs
Book 2: Histoire Naturelle de l’homme (310p.) + Histoire Naturelle des animaux (357p.) + many lithographs
Book 3: Histoire Naturelle des animaux (597p.) + many lithographs
Book 4: Histoire Naturelle des animaux (680p.) + many lithographs
