Volume 8

Natural history, general and particular / by the Count de Buffon, translated into English. Illustrated with above 300 copper-plates, and occasional notes and observations. By William Smellie.

  • Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 1707-1788.
Date:
1785
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural history, general and particular / by the Count de Buffon, translated into English. Illustrated with above 300 copper-plates, and occasional notes and observations. By William Smellie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    69/462 (page 53)
    deavoured to comprehend under them beings, © and even whole clafles of beings, which required different appellations. I can give an example, without departing from the clafs of quadrupeds, which, of all animals, we are beft acquainted with, and, of courfe, were in a condition to have beftowed on them the moft precife denomina- tions. | The name guadruped fuppofes that the ani- mal has four fect. fit wants two feet, like the manati; if it has arms and hands, like the ape’; or if it has wings, like the bat ; it is not a quadruped. Hence this general term, when applied ‘to thefe animals, is abufed., To obtain precifion in words, the ideasthey prefent muft be ftrictly true. If we had a term for two hands fimilar to that which denotes two feet, we might then fay that man was the only biped and dima- nus, becaufe he alone hastwo handsand two feet: that the manatiis a damanus ; that the bat is only a biped ; and that the ape is a guadrima- nus, or four-handed animal, Let us now apply thefe new denominations to all the particular beings to which they belong, and we fhall find, that, from about two hundred animals who go under the common name of guadrupeds, thirty- five fpecies of apes, baboons, monkeys, fapajous, fagoins, and makis, muft be retrenched, becaufe they are guadrimanus, or four-handed ; and that to thefe thirty-five fpecies, the loris, or taillefs maucauco, the Virginian, murine, and Mexican D 3 opoflum,