Switzerland he began to know other English people of distinction. All these friendships led him at last to England, and he went to Thoresby, the seat of Lord Kingston, and remained in the country for some months. Buffon had a very fine person, liked a little “show,” and the rather solemn and stilted manners of the British nobility pleased him. It was this stay in England, and his friendships, that gave Buffon some of the manners of the aristocracy of the day, so that Hume said of him that he resembled a marshal of France more than a man of letters. These habits, amongst which courtesy and true gentility—that is to say, treating other people as we would they should treat us in society—were predominant, clung to Buffon; and even when at home, and at his very hard and incessant labour in natural history, he kept up his state, and was the great French noble as well as the humble student of nature. It is a curious fact, but one very readily explained, that Buffon, like nearly all the great zoologists, began his scientific life as a botanist. Plants are ever at hand, and their classification, good or bad, is readily learned. One of his first works, presented after receiving the honour of election to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, was on a question of the influence of barking trees; and others were on agriculture. He gave a proof that he was acquainted with the human frame, for he wrote on the causes of squinting. Scientific men of nobility were rare in France in those days, and Buffon was appointed keeper to the Jardin du Roi and the Royal Museum. Anxious to continue his studies about trees, he prevailed on the king to let him experiment on a grand scale in one of the royal forests. But this was only a part of his work, for he commenced that great book on natural history which was always after to be associated with his name. It was not to be a simple book on animals, but on the history of the earth as well; and, in fact, he intended it to be an encyclopædia of all natural knowledge except mathematics and figures. It was a great conception and it was carried out year after year during success, domestic happiness and trouble. The perseverance and patience of the man were wonderful; and fortunately he had the means of collecting what was required, of buying books and of having secretaries to do the very troublesome and mechanical part of writing. He was short-sighted and wrote badly. It was not vanity, nor the desire of being great, that made Buffon work; certainly it was not amusement. But he was happy in his work, and he stated that genius is a gift which comes not from man; and the great man is an instrument in the Divine hand; he has a mission which may be for light or to ruin, and neither the environment of pleasure or glory or the troubles of fortune, ill-health, or misery should deter him from his ends. Genius, Buffon also termed, a very great aptitude for patience.