_Barr's Buffon._ ------ Buffon's Natural History. CONTAINING A THEORY OF THE EARTH, A GENERAL _HISTORY OF MAN_, OF THE BRUTE CREATION, AND OF VEGETABLES, MINERALS, _&c. &c._ FROM THE FRENCH. WITH NOTES BY THE TRANSLATOR. IN TEN VOLUMES. ======== VOL. X. ======== London: PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR, AND SOLD BY H. D. SYMONDS, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1807. T. Gillet, Printer, Crown-Court, Fleet-Street. CONTENTS. OF THE TENTH VOLUME. _Page_ _Of the Degeneration of Animals_ 1 Nature and Properties of Minerals, Vegetables, &c. _Light, Heat, and Fire_ 27 _Of Air, Water, and Earth_ 75 _Experiments on the Progress of Heat in Mineral Substances_ 109 _A Table of the Relations of different Mineral Substances_ 135 _Observations on the Nature of Platina_ 156 Experiments on Light, and on the Heat it can produce. _Invention of Mirrors to burn at great distances_ 193 _Observations and Experiments on Trees and other Vegetables_ 245 _On the Temperature of the Planets_ 279 General Views of Nature. _First View_ 325 _Second View_ 343 BUFFON'S NATURAL HISTORY. _OF THE DEGENERATION OF ANIMALS._ The deer-kind whose horns are a sort of wood, and of a solid texture, although ruminating, and internally formed like those whose horns are hollow and porous, seem to form a separate family, in which the elk is the trunk, and the rein-deer, stag, axis, fallow-deer, and roe-buck, are the lesser and collateral branches; for there are only six species of animals whose heads are armed with branched horns that fall off and are renewed every year. Independently of this generic character, they resemble each other still more in formation and natural habitude; we should, therefore, sooner expect mules from the stag or fallow-deer, joined with the rein-deer or the axis, than from a union of the stag with the cow.