The Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi (; ) is an encyclopaedic collection of 36 large (quarto) volumes written between 1749 and 1804, initially by the Comte de Buffon, and continued in eight more volumes after his death (in 1788) by his colleagues, led by Bernard Germain de Lacépède. The books cover what was known of the "natural sciences" at the time, including what would now be called material science, physics, chemistry and technology as well as the natural history of animals.
The early volumes (IV to XV) are on quadrupeds. The next group (XVI to XXIV) are on birds, followed by a group on minerals (XXV to XXIX). There followed a group of supplements on geology and related subjects, with additional quadrupeds (XXX to XXXVI). Further supplements covered the reptiles (XXXVII to XXXVIII) and fishes (XXXIX to XXXXIII). Finally there was a volume on cetaceans (XXXXIV). The work was republished in various editions in France, and was translated into languages including English, German, Swedish, Italian, and Russian.
Buffon was assisted over the years by a variety of authors with different expertise, including Philippe Guéneau de Montbeillard on birds. The principal illustrator was Jacques de Sève, who prepared some 2000 plates for the encyclopedia, while additional plates on birds were made by François-Nicolas Martinet.
The Histoire Naturelle was welcomed by its wealthy readership: the first edition sold out within six weeks. However, it attracted criticism from some priests for its assertion that the Earth was over 6,000 years old, contradicting the biblical account.
From the 21st-century perspective of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the work has been seen as introducing "a secular and realist account of the origins of the earth and its life forms", contrary to the tradition of Descartes. Others such as the botanist Sandra Knapp have commented on Buffon's purple prose, which tended to obscure any ideas in the text. The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr called Buffon "the father of all thought in natural history" at his time, setting the scene for evolutionists to address the issues he raised.
An encyclopaedic work
The Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi is the work that the Comte de Buffon (1707–1788) is remembered for. He worked on it for some 50 years, initially at Montbard in his office in the Tour Saint-Louis, then in his library at Petit Fontenet. 36 volumes came out between 1749 and 1789, followed by 8 more after his death, thanks to Bernard Germain de Lacépède. It includes all the knowledge available in his time on the "natural sciences", a broad term that includes disciplines which today would be called material science, physics, chemistry and technology. Buffon notes the morphological similarities between men and apes, although he considered apes completely devoid of the ability to think, differentiating them sharply from human beings.Buffon, "Nomenclature des Singes ", in Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi, Tome Quatorzième ("Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupèdes" XI), Imprimerie royale, Paris, 1766. Buffon's attention to internal anatomy made him an early comparative anatomist. "L’intérieur, dans les êtres vivants, est le fond du dessin de la nature", he wrote in his Quadrupèdes, "the interior, in living things, is the foundation of nature's design."Buffon, "L'Unau et l'Aï", in Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi, Tome Treizième ("Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupèdes" X), Imprimerie royale, Paris, 1765.
L’Histoire Naturelle met immense success, almost as great as Encyclopédie by Diderot, which came out in the same period. The first three volumes of L’Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du cabinet du Roi were reprinted three times in six weeks.Roger, Jacques. Buffon, un philosophe au Jardin du Roi, Fayard, Paris, 1989, 645 p.
Contents by volume
The original edition was arranged as follows:
Natural history, and description of the king's cabinet of curiosities
Volume I : Premier Discours - De la manière d’étudier et de traiter l’histoire naturelle, Second Discours - Histoire et théorie de la Terre, Preuves de la théorie de la Terre, 1749 Volume II : Histoire générale des Animaux, Histoire Naturelle de l'Homme, 1749 Volume III : Description du cabinet du Roi, Histoire Naturelle de l'Homme, 1749
Quadrupèdes (Quadrupeds)
Volume IV (Quadrupèdes I) : Discours sur la nature des Animaux, Les Animaux domestiques, 1753 Volume V (Quadrupèdes II) : 1755 Volume VI (Quadrupèdes III) : Les Animaux sauvages, 1756 Volume VII (Quadrupèdes IV) : Les Animaux carnassiers, 1758 Volume VIII (Quadrupèdes V) : 1760 Volume IX (Quadrupèdes VI) : 1761 Volume X (Quadrupèdes VII) : 1763 Volume XI (Quadrupèdes VIII) : 1764 Volume XII (Quadrupèdes IX) : 1764 Volume XIII (Quadrupèdes X) : 1765 Volume XIV (Quadrupèdes XI) : Nomenclature des Singes, De la dégénération des Animaux, 1766 Volume XV (Quadrupèdes XII) : 1767
Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux (Birds) (1770–1783)
Volume XVI (Oiseaux I) : 1770 Volume XVII (Oiseaux II) : 1771 Volume XVIII (Oiseaux III) : 1774 Volume XIX (Oiseaux IV) : 1778 Volume XX (Oiseaux V) : 1778 Volume XXI (Oiseaux VI) : 1779 Volume XXII (Oiseaux VII) : 1780 Volume XXIII (Oiseaux VIII) : 1781 Volume XXIV (Oiseaux IX) : 1783
Histoire Naturelle des Minéraux (Minerals) (1783–1788)
Volume XXV (Minéraux I) : 1783 Volume XXVI (Minéraux II) : 1783 Volume XXVII (Minéraux III) : 1785 Volume XXVIII (Minéraux IV) : 1786 Volume XXIX (Minéraux V) : Traité de l'Aimant et de ses usages, 1788
Suppléments à l’Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière (Supplements) (1774–1789)
Volume XXX (Suppléments I) : Servant de suite à la Théorie de la Terre, et d’introduction à l’Histoire des Minéraux, 1774 Volume XXXI (Suppléments II) : Servant de suite à la Théorie de la Terre, et de préliminaire à l’Histoire des Végétaux - Parties Expérimentale & Hypothétique, 1775 Volume XXXII (Suppléments III) : Servant de suite à l'Histoire des Animaux quadrupèdes, 1776 Volume XXXIII (Suppléments IV) : Servant de suite à l'Histoire Naturelle de l'Homme, 1777 Volume XXXIV (Suppléments V) : Des Époques de la nature, 1779 Volume XXXV (Suppléments VI) : Servant de suite à l'Histoire des Animaux quadrupèdes, 1782 Volume XXXVI (Suppléments VII) : Servant de suite à l'Histoire des Animaux quadrupèdes, 1789
Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupèdes ovipares et des Serpents (Egg-laying Quadrupeds and Snakes) (1788–1789)
Volume XXXVII (Reptiles I) : Histoire générale et particulière des Quadrupèdes ovipares, 1788 Volume XXXVIII (Reptiles II) : Histoire des Serpents, 1789
Histoire Naturelle des Poissons (Fish) (1798–1803) Volume XXXIX (Poissons I) : 1798 Volume XXXX (Poissons II) : 1800 Volume XXXXI (Poissons III) : 1802 Volume XXXXII (Poissons IV) : 1802 Volume XXXXIII (Poissons V) : 1803
Histoire Naturelle des Cétacés (Cetaceans) (1804) Volume XXXXIV (Cétacés) : 1804
Authors and artists
The descriptive and anatomical part of l’Histoire des Quadrupèdes was the work of Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton. Philippe Guéneau de Montbeillard worked on the birds, assisted later by Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond and the abbot Gabriel Bexon. Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond and Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau provided sources for the mineral volumes.
Buffon commissioned Jacques de Sève to illustrate the quadrupeds,Benezit, Emmanuel (1911–1923). Dictionnaire de Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, vol. 12, p. 713 while François-Nicolas Martinet illustrated the birds. Some 2000 plates by de Sève adorn the work, representing mammals, reptiles, and some birds.
After Buffon's death, the work was continued by Bernard Germain de Lacépède, who described the egg-laying quadrupeds, snakes, fishes and cetaceans in 8 volumes (1788–1804).
Approach
Each group is introduced with a general essay. This is followed by an article, sometimes of many pages, on each animal (or other item). The article on the wolf begins with the claim that it is one of the animals with a specially strong appetite for flesh; it asserts that the animal is naturally coarse and cowardly (grossier et poltron), but becoming crafty at need, and hardy by necessity, driven by hunger.Le Loup Volume VII. p. 39 The species is named in Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, German, English, Swedish, and Polish. The zoological descriptions of the species by Gessner, Ray, Linnaeus, Klein and Buffon himself ("Canis ex griseo flavescens. Lupus vulgaris. Buffon. Reg. animal. pag. 235") are cited. The text is written as a continuous essay, without the sections on identification, distribution and behaviour that might have been expected from other natural histories. Parts concern human responses rather than the animal itself, as for example that the wolf likes human flesh, and the strongest wolves sometimes eat nothing else.Le Loup Volume VII. p. 48 Measurements may be included; in the case of the wolf, 41 separate measurements are tabulated, in pre-revolutionary French feet and inches starting with the "Length of the whole body measured in a straight line from the end of the muzzle to the anus........3 feet. 7 inches." (1.2 m); the "Length of the largest claws" is given as "10 lines" (2.2 cm). The wolf is illustrated standing in farmland, and as a complete skeleton standing on a stone plinth in a landscape. The account of the species occupies 32 pages including illustrations.Le Loup Volume VII. pp. 57–58
Editions
Buffon's original edition continued by Lacépède
The original edition of the Histoire Naturelle by Buffon comprised 36 volumes in quarto, divided into the following series: Histoire de la Terre et de l'Homme, Quadrupèdes, Oiseaux, Minéraux, Suppléments. Buffon edited 35 volumes in his lifetime. Soon after his death, the fifth and final volume of l’Histoire des minéraux appeared in 1788 at the Imprimerie des Bâtiments du Roi. The seventh and final volume of Suppléments by Buffon was published posthumously in 1789 through Lacépède's hands. Lacépède continued the part of the Histoire Naturelle which dealt with animals. A few months before Buffon's death, in 1788, Lacépède published, as a continuation, the first volume of his Histoire des Reptiles, on egg-laying quadrupeds. The next year, he wrote a second volume on snakes, published during the French Revolution. Between 1798 and 1803, he brought out the volume Histoire des Poissons. Lacépède made use of the notes and collections left by Philibert Commerson (1727–1773). He wrote Histoire des Cétacés which was printed in 1804. At that point, the Histoire Naturelle, by Buffon and Lacépède, thus contained 44 quarto volumes forming the definitive edition.Hendrik Cornelius Dirk De Wit, Histoire du Développement de la Biologie, Volume III, Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, Lausanne, 1994, pp. 101–110.
Variations in the editions by Buffon and Lacépède
Another edition in quarto format was printed by the Imprimerie royale in 36 volumes (1774–1804). It consisted of 28 volumes by Buffon, and 8 volumes by Lacépède. The part containing anatomical articles by Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton was dropped. The supplements were merged into the relevant articles in the main volumes.
The Imprimerie royale also published two editions of the Histoire Naturelle in duodecimo format (1752–1805), occupying 90 or 71 volumes, depending on whether or not they included the part on anatomy. In this print format, the original work by Buffon occupied 73 volumes, with the part on anatomy, or 54 volumes without it. The continuation by Lacépède took up 17 duodecimo volumes.