Art Gallery - Buffon 1837

Hand-coloured plate is from "Oeuvres Completes de Buffon" (suivies de la Classification Comparee de Cuvier, Lesson, etc.). Nouvelle Edition Revue par M. Richard, Professeur a la Faculte de Medecine de Paris. Paris, Auguste Desrez, Editeur, Rue Saint Georges, 11, Pourrat Freres, Editeurs, Rue des Petits Augustines, 5, M. DCCC. XXXVII. (1837) Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was the French naturalist perhaps most responsible for the rise of European interest in natural history during the eighteenth century. His massive Histoire Naturelle (36 volumes) set out to organize all that was then known about the natural world. He was the source of important ideas about the distribution of plants and animals around the globe, relationships among species, the age of the earth, the sources of biological variation, and the possibility of evolution. The numerous illustrations to Buffon's volumes, which began publication in 1749, became the source of information about the visual appearance of creatures that inhabited every continent.