An eminent instance of perversity of logic--of which, by the way, the history of human thought supplies too many examples--is that of the well-known author of the _Histoire Naturelle_, a work which (highly interesting as it is, and always will be, by reason of the detailed and generally accurate delineation of the characters and habits of the various forms of animated nature, and by reason of the graces of style of that French classic) is, from a strictly scientific point of view, of not always the most reliable authority. Although Buffon has depicted as forcibly as well can be conceived the low position in Nature of the carnivorous tribes, and not a few of the evils arising from human addiction to carnivorousness, yet, by a strange perversion of the facts of comparative physiology, he has chosen to enlist himself amongst the apologists of that degenerate mode of living. But facts are stronger than prejudices, and his very candid _admissions_, which we shall here quote, speak sufficiently for themselves:-- “Man [says he] knows how to use, as a master, his power over [other] animals. He has selected those whose flesh _flatters his taste_. He has made domestic slaves of them. He has multiplied them more than Nature could have done. He has formed innumerable flocks, and by the cares which he takes in propagating them he _seems_[183] to have acquired the right of sacrificing them for himself. But he extends that right _much beyond_ his needs. For, independently of those species which he has subjected, and of which he disposes at his will, he makes war also upon wild animals, upon birds, upon fishes. He does not even limit himself to those of the climate he inhabits. He seeks at a distance, even in the remotest seas, new meats, and entire Nature seems scarcely to suffice for his intemperance and the inconsistent variety of his appetites. “_Man alone consumes and engulfs more flesh than all other animals put together. He is, then, the greatest destroyer, and he is so more by abuse than by necessity._ Instead of enjoying with moderation the resources offered him, in place of dispensing them with equity, in place of repairing in proportion as he destroys, of renewing in proportion as he annihilates, the rich man makes all his boast and glory in _consuming_, all his splendour in destroying, in one day, at his table, more material (_plus de biens_) than would be necessary for the support of several families. He abuses equally other animals and his own species, the rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable vanity of this human being who, _destroying others by want, destroys himself by excess_.