Volume 2

A natural history, general and particular containing the history and theory of the earth, a general history of man, the brute creation, vegetables, minerals, &c, &c / by George Louis Le Clerc, count of Buffon ; translated from the French by William Smellie.

  • Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 1707-1788.
Date:
1817
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A natural history, general and particular containing the history and theory of the earth, a general history of man, the brute creation, vegetables, minerals, &c, &c / by George Louis Le Clerc, count of Buffon ; translated from the French by William Smellie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    opposite sides, aboat 30 degrees, which is not the pre- cise fact ; for that of the Old Continent is a little more than 30 degrees, and that of the New a little less. If I had given this explanation, I should have avoided the imputation of having drawn two lines of unequal lengths, under the same angle between two parallels] which would have proved, as an anonymous critic remarks, that I am unacquainted with the elements of geometry. 4. I neglected to distinguish Upper from Lower Egypt ; there is the appearance of a contradiction. -In the first of these passages, Egypt seems to be ranked among the most ancient lands, while, in the second, it is reckoned among the most recent. I was wrong in not distinguishing, as I had elsewhere done, Upper Egypt, which is a very ancient land, from Lower Egypt, which is a very new territory. II. Of the Form oj Continents. With regard to the figure of Continents, I shall tran- scribe a passage from the ingenious author of the Philo- sophical and Political History of the two Indies. ‘ It is- now thought to be certain/ he remarks, ‘ that * the surface of the New Continent is not one half of f that of the Old. Besides, in their figure there are * some striking analogies.—They seem to form two im- * mense bands of earth, which arise from the Arctic pole, ‘ terminate in the South, and separated on the East and * West by the ocean that invests them. Independent ‘ of the structure of these two bands, and of the counter- * poise or symmetry which takes place in their figure ] * it is apparent, that their equilibrium depends not on * their position ; it is the fluctuation of the sea which * produces the stability of the earth. To fix the globe ( on its base, it was necessary to have an element which, * by floating continually around this planet, should * counterbalance, by its weight, the other substances, * and restore that equilibrium which the collision of the ‘ other elements might have disturbed. Water, by its ‘ fluidity and gravity, is well fitted to support that har- ‘ mony and that balance of the different parts of the c globe around its centre. ‘ If the waters which still moisten the bowels of the * New Hemisphere had not deluged its surface, man ‘ would soon have cut down the woods, drained the ‘ marshes, and given consistence to a watery soil.—He ‘ would have opened vents to the winds, and confined ‘ the rivers within their banks ; the climate, of course, ‘ would have already been changed. But an unculti- 1 vated and thinly inhabited hemisphere announces a * recent land, while the waters which environ its coasts ‘ still creep silently through its veins/ On this subject I shall remark, that, although there is more water on the surface of America than on that of 65—66. other countries, we ought not to conclude from this cir- cumstance, that an internal sea is contained in the bowels of this new land. We should only infer from this number of lakes, marshes, and large rivers, that America has been peopled long after Asia, Africa, and Europe, where the quantity of stagnant waters is much less. Bésides, a thousand other circumstances concur in showing, that the Continent of America in general ought to be regarded as new land, in which Nature has not had time to acquire all her powers, nor to exhibit them by a numerous population. III. Of the Terra Australis, p. 38. To what I have said concerning the Terra Australis, I shall add, that, within these few years, new attempts have been made to discover it, and that some points of it have been found after departing either from the Cape of Good Hope, or from the Isle of France; but that these new voyagers have uniformly met with thick fogs, snow, and ice, in the 46th or 47th degree of South latitude. After conversing with some of these voyagers, and collecting all the information I could derive from other sources, I perceived that they all agreed with re- gard to this fact, and that they found ice in much lower latitudes than is to be met with in the northern hemi- sphere. They likewise uniformly met with fogs in the same latitudes where they found ice, though it was summer in these climates at the time the experiments were made. It is therefore extremely probable, that, below the 50th degree, it will be in vain to search for temperate countries in the southern hemisphere, where the freezing cold is much farther extended than in the northern. The thick fog is produced by the presence or neighbourhood of the ice. This fog consists of mi- nute particles of snow, which are suspended in the air, and render it obscure: it often accompanies the great floating masses of ice, and reigns perpetually in frozen regions. Besides, the British have lately sailed round New Holland as well as New Zealand. These southern countries are more extensive than the whole of Europe. New Zealand is divided into several islands; but New Holland ought rather to be regarded as a part of Asia, than as an island belonging to the Southern Continent ; for New Holland is only separated from the land of the Papous, or New Guinea, by a narrow strait, and the whole Archipelago, which extends southward from the Philippine isles, as far as the country of Arnheim in New Holland, and toward the west and south, as far as Su- matra and Java, appears to belong as much to the con- tinent of New Holland, as to the southern parts of Asia. Captain Cook, who ought to be regarded as the great- est navigator of this age, and to whom we are indebted O