Buffon's Natural History. Volume 07 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &cBuffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
History
Buffon's Natural History. Volume 07 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
Natural history
for this recital to the oral information of that gentleman. These
three remarks are alone sufficient to create a suspicion respecting the
pretended _animal zibethicum Americanum_, but what completely proves
the error, Fernandes, in his description of the animals of America,
flatly contradicts Bolivar, and affirms that the civet was not a native
of America, but that, in his time, they had began to transport some
of them from the Philippine Islands to New Spain. In fine, if we add
this positive testimony of Fernandes, to that of all the travellers,
who mention that civets are very common in the Philippine Islands, in
the East Indies, and in Africa, not one of whom intimates having seen
this animal in America, every doubt will vanish of what we advanced
in our enumeration of the animals of the two continents, and it will
be admitted that the civet is not a native of America, but an animal
peculiar to the warm climates of the old continent, and that he was
never found in the new, until after he had been transported thither.
Had I not guarded against such mistakes, which are too frequent, I
should have described my civet as an American animal, from its having
been sent to me from St. Domingo, and not directly from Guinea, the
place of its nativity, of which I was, however, assured by the letter
from M. Pages which accompanied the animal. These particular facts
I consider as confirmations to the general position, that there is a
real difference between all the animals of the southern parts of each
continent.
[Footnote S: Novæ Hisp. Anim. Nardi Antonii Recchi Imagines & Nomina,
Joannis Fabri Lyncei Expositione, p. 539.]
[Footnote T: _Ibid._ p. 465.]
Both the civet and zibet are then animals of the old continent, nor
have they any other external differences, besides those already
pointed out; and as to their internal differences, and the structure
of their reservoirs which contain the perfume, they have been so
accurately described by Messrs. Morand and Peyronnie, in the Memoirs
of the Academy for 1728 and 1731, that I could do little more than
give a repetition of their accounts. With regard to what remains to be
further observed of those two animals, as the few facts are hardly more
applicable to the one than the other, and as it would be difficult to
point out the distinction, I shall collect the whole under one head.
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