The extent and variety of his knowledge, the justness of his reasonings, the greatness of his views, his correct taste, and manly eloquence, qualified him, better, perhaps, than any other individual, to compose the History of Nature. The errors into which he Has fallen, are almost all the unavoidable consequences of the circumstances in which he was placed; and if their amount is estimated by the proportion that they bear to the general excellence of the work, they will be reckoned but of small account. Buffon began to write when many parts of natural history had made but little progress; when the quantity of authentic information was small, and when scientific and correct description was hardly to be found. Many of the greatest and most important facts in geology were quite unknown, and scarcely any part of the mineral kingdom had been accurately surveyed; and, with such materials as this state of things afforded, it is not wonderful if some parts of the edifice he erected have not proved so solid and durable as the rest. Had he appeared somewhat later; had he been farther removed from the time when reasonings _a priori_ usurped the place of induction; and had he been as willing to correct the errors into which he had been betrayed by imperfect information, as he was ingenious in defending them, his work would probably have reached as great perfection, as it is given for any thing without the sphere of the accurate sciences to attain. If he had examined the natural history of the earth more with his own eyes, and been as careful to delineate it with fidelity as force; if he had listened with greater care to the philosophers around him; had he attended to the demonstrations of NEWTON more, and despised the arrangements of LINNÆUS less; he would have produced a work, as singular for its truth as for its beauty, and would have gone near to merit the eulogy pronounced by the enthusiasm of his countrymen, MAJESTATI NATURÆ PAR INGENIUM. NOTE XXV. § 130. _Figure of the Earth._ 429. That the earth is a spheroidal body, compressed at the poles, or elevated at the equator, is a fact established by many accurate experiments; and though these experiments do not exactly coincide, as to the degree of oblateness which they give to that spheroid, they agree sufficiently to put it beyond all dispute, that the earth, though solid, has nearly the same figure which it would assume if fluid, in consequence of its rotation on its axis.