In Buffon’s hands the _Jardin du Roi_ was transformed; in proportion as his mind developed, the requirements of the study appeared to him greater and greater; he satisfied them fearlessly, getting together collections at his own expense, opening new galleries, constructing hot-houses, being constantly seconded by the good-will of Louis XV., who never shrank from expenses demanded by Buffon’s projects. The great naturalist died at eighty years of age, without having completed his work; but he had imprinted upon it that indisputable stamp of greatness which was the distinctive feature of his genius. The _Jardin du Roi,_ which became the _Jardin des Plantes,_ has remained unique in Europe. Fully engaged as he was in those useful labors, from the age of thirty, Buffon gave up living at Paris for the greater part of the year. He had bought the ruins of the castle of Montbard, the ancient residence of the Dukes of Burgundy, overlooking his native town. He had built a house there which soon became dear to him, and which he scarcely ever left for eight months in the year. There it was, in a pavilion which overhung the garden planted in terraces, and from which he had a view of the rich plains of La Brenne, that the great naturalist, carefully dressed by five o’clock in the morning, meditated the vast plan of his works as he walked from end to end and side to side. “I passed delightful hours there,” he used to say. When he summoned his secretary, the work of composition was completed. “M. de Buffon gives reasons for the preference he shows as to every word in his discourses, without excluding from the discussion even the smallest particles, the most insignificant conjunctions,” says Madame Necker; “he never forgot that he had written ‘the style is the man.’ The language could not be allowed to derogate from the majesty of the subject. ‘I made it a rule,’ he used to say, ‘to always fix upon the noblest expressions.’” It was in this dignified and studious retirement that Buffon quietly passed his long life. “I dedicated,” he says, “ twelve, nay, fourteen, hours to study; it was my whole pleasure. In truth, I devoted myself to it far more than I troubled myself about fame; fame comes afterwards, if it may, and it nearly always does.”