1 [The Duke of Kingston is Evelyn Pierrepont, 2nd Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull (born 1711; died 23 September 1773, in Holme Pierrepont near Nottingham), an English nobleman and landowner, a member of the House of Lords.]
2 [Stephen Hales, see Volume 2, Lesson 13, note 87; for Hales’s Vegetable staticks, see Volume 3, Lesson 7, note 12.]
3 [Sir Isaac Newton, see Volume 2, Lesson 11, note 37; for Newton’s Treatise of Fluxions, see Volume 3, Lesson 2, note 43.]
4 [Archimedes, see Volume 1, Lesson 18, note 1.]
5 [Charles François de Cisternay du Fay, see Volume 3, Lesson 15, note 20; when Cisternay du Fay died of smallpox in 1739, at age 41, Buffon succeeded him as superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes.]
6 [Pierre Chirac, see Volume 3, Lesson 18, note 35.]
7 [Dufay, among other things, discovered the existence of two types of electricity and named them “vitreous” and “resinous” (later known as positive and negative charge, respectively). He noted the difference between conductors and insulators, calling them “electrics” and “non-electrics” for their ability to produce and conduct electricity. He also discovered that like-charged objects repel each other and that unlike-charged objects attract.]
8 [Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, 1st Count of Maurepas (born 9 July 1701, Versailles; died 21 November 1781, Versailles), a French statesman, responsible for having recorded extensive information on all naval matters including naval construction, navigation sailing instructions and fighting at sea. His collection of memoirs is now in the possession of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.]
9 [Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, see Volume 2, Lesson 17, note 77.]
10 [Buffon’s Histoire naturelle des Singes. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1770‑1771, 2 vols, in-quarto.]
11 [Buffon’s Histoire naturelle des oiseaux. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1770‑1783, 9 vols in-quarto.]
12 [Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière contenant les époques de la nature. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1778, vi + 504 p.; Buffon’s discussion of the origins of the solar system, speculating that the planets had been created by a comet’s collision with the sun. He also suggested that the earth originated much earlier than 4004 BC, the date determined by Archbishop James Ussher. Basing his figures on the cooling rate of iron tested at his Laboratory the Petit Fontenet at Montbard, he calculated that the age of the earth was 75,000 years. Once again, his ideas were condemned by the Sorbonne, and once again he issued a retraction to avoid further problems.]
13 [Why Cuvier would say that Buffon’s last work appeared in 1789, when publication continued well into the nineteenth century, is a mystery. Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi, an encyclopedic collection of 36 large volumes was published from 1749 to 1804, initially by the Comte de Buffon, and continued in eight more volumes after his death by his colleagues, led by Bernard Germain de Lacepède. The books cover what was known of the “natural sciences” at the time, including what would now be called material science, physics, chemistry and technology as well as the natural history of animals.]
14 [Discourse on method, a reference to Buffon’s “Premier discours,” a preface of sorts to the first volume of his Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, published in 1749; it argues that repeated observation could lead to a greater certainty of knowledge even greater than a mathematical analysis of nature.]
15 [Quadrumana, as opposed to Bimana, an obsolete division of the primates: the Quadrumana are primates with four hands (two attached to the arms and two attached to the legs), and the Bimana are those with two hands and two feet. The division, first proposed by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (born 11 May 1752, Gotha, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg; died 22 January 1840, Göttingen, Electorate of Hanover) in the first edition of his Handbuch der Naturgeschichte (Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich, 1779, 448 p. + 2 pls) and taken up by other naturalists, most notably Cuvier, forms a stage in the long campaign to find a secure way of distinguishing Homo sapiens from the rest of the great apes, a distinction that was culturally essential at the time.]
16 [René Descartes, see Volume 1, Lesson 6, note 7)
17 [Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, see Volume 3, Lesson 2; see also Volume 1, Lesson 6, note 22.]
18 [Eilhard Mitscherlich (born 7 January 1794, Neuende, Jever; died 28 August 1863, Schöneberg, Prussia), a German chemist and geologist, who developed a theory on the cause of volcanism but perhaps best remembered for his discovery of the phenomenon of crystallographic isomorphism in 1819.]
19 [Pierre-Simon Laplace (born 23 March 1749, Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy; died 5 March 1827, Paris), a French mathematician who, in proposing a theory of the origin of the solar system in his Exposition du Système du Monde (Paris: Imprimerie du Cercle-Social, 1796, 2 vols, 314 + [4] p.; 312 + [4] p., in-octavo), demonstrated that the arrangement of the planets could be entirely explained by the laws of motion, eliminating the need for the “supreme intelligence” to intervene, as Newton had claimed.]
20 [Protogaea, sive de prima facie telluris et antiquissimae historiae vestigiis in ipsis naturae monumentis dissertatio, see Volume 3, Lesson 3, note 17.]
21 [Histoire et théorie de la terre, see Volume 3, Lesson 5, note 12.]
22 [William Whiston, see Volume 2, Lesson 19, note 44.]
23 [Thomas Burnet, see Volume 2, Lesson 19, note 29.]
24 [Histoire et théorie de la terre, see note 21, above.]
25 [Époques de la Nature, see note 12, above.]
26 [Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure, see Volume 2, Lesson 18, note 17.]
27 [Peter Simon Pallas, see Volume 2, Lesson 17, note 80.]
28 [Jean André Deluc, see Volume 1, Lesson 3, note 22.]
29 [Abraham Gottlob Werner (born 25 September 1749, Wehrau, Prussian Silesia, now Osiecznica, Poland; died 30 June 1817, Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony), a German geologist who proposed an early theory about the stratification of the Earth’s crust and described a history of the Earth that came to be known as Neptunism. While most tenets of Neptunism were eventually set aside, Werner is remembered for his demonstration of chronological succession in rocks; for the zeal with which he infused his pupils; and for the impulse he thereby gave to the study of geology. He is often referred to as the “father of German geology.”]
30 [Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek, see Volume 2, Lesson 15, note 14.]
31 [Charles Bonnet, see Volume 3, Lesson 2, note 6.]
32 [Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (born, 30 September 1714, Grenoble, France; died 3 August 1780, Lailly-en-Val, France), a French philosopher and epistemologist, who studied psychology and the philosophy of the mind. He was the chief exponent of a radically empiricist account of the workings of the mind that has since come to be referred to as “sensationalism.”]
33 [Ex professo, by profession or as an expert; with the competence one would expect from a professional; in the capacity of an expert.]
34 [Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, see Volume 2, Lesson 2, note 65.]
35 [Histoire naturelle de l’homme. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1774‑1778, 2 vols, vol. 1, L’homme imprévu, 1774, [3] + 603 p.; vol. 2, L’homme fou, 1778, [4] + lxvi + 582 p.]
36 [An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: printed for Thomas Basset, 4 parts, [15] + 362 + [22] p.), a work by John Locke (see Volume 3, Lesson 1, note 85), published in 1689 (although dated 1690), concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. He describes the mind at birth as a blank slate (tabula rasa, although he did not use those actual words) filled later through experience. The essay was one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers.]
37 [Discours sur la nature des animaux. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1753, pp.]
38 [René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (see Volume 2, Lesson 16, note 31), a reference to Réaumur’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des insects (see Volume 3, Lesson 19, note 6).]
39 [Daubenton, see note 9, Above.]
40 [Quadrupeds, defined as terrestrial vertebrates that move on four legs (i.e., mammals, and most reptiles and amphibians), include approximately 23,700 described species. Birds are traditionally thought of as a well-studied group, with more than 95 percent of their global species diversity estimated to have been described; most checklists used by bird watchers as well as by scientists say there are roughly between 9,000 and 10,000 species.]
41 [Francois Nicolas Martinet (1725‑1804), French court engraver and artist, the foremost bird artist of his day, responsible for the 1,008 hand-colored copper plate engravings of birds that illustrated Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux, published in Paris from 1770 to 1786. This work was the most famous and comprehensive ornithological work of the 18th century.]
42 [Philippe Guéneau de Montbeillard (born 2 April 1720, Semur-en-Auxois, France; died 28 November 1785, Paris), a French lawyer, writer, naturalist, who, at the request of Buffon, contributed to the Histoire naturelle (1749‑1789), and specifically to the sub-series on birds, the Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (1770‑1783). Guéneau contributed anonymously to volumes 1 and 2 of the sub-series and under his own name to volumes 3 through 6.]
43 [Gabriel-Leopold-Charles-Amé Bexon (born March 1748, Remiremont, France; died 15 February 1784, Paris), a French writer and naturalist, who contributed to Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle by writing the history of minerals as well as the volumes devoted to birds,while seeking to imitate Buffon’s writing style.]
44 [Jacques René Hébert (born 15 November 1757, Alençon, France; died 24 March 1794, Paris), a French journalist and the founder and editor of the extreme radical newspaper Le Père Duchesne during the French Revolution.
45 [Louis Antoine François Baillon (born 20 January 1778, Montreuil-sur-Mer; died 3 December 1855, Abbeville), a French naturalist and collector, who developed an ornithological collection that eventually grew to 6,000 specimens. He is best remembered for his “Catalogue des mammifères, oiseaux, reptiles, poissons et mollusques testacés marins, observés dans l’arrondissement d’Abbeville”, published in the Mémoires de la Société d’Émulation d’Abbeville, 1833, pp. 49‑80.
46 [Peter Simon Pallas, see Volume 2, Lesson 17, note 80.]
47 [Buffon’s Histoire naturelle des minéraux, five volumes published between 1783 and 1788.]
48 [Jean-Baptiste Louis Romé de Lisle, see Volume 3, Lesson 9, note 21.]
49 [Torbern Olaf Bergman, see Volume 2, Lesson 9, note 1.]
50 [Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure, see Volume 2, Lesson 18, note 17.]
51 [René Just Haüy, see Volume 2, Lesson 17, note 78.]
52 [Balthazar-Georges Sage (born 7 May 1740, Paris; died 9 September 1824, Paris), a French pharmacist, chemist, and mineralogist. Except as founder of the Paris École des Mines, there is little reason to rate Sage as an important scientific figure. He published extensively, often hurriedly, and —toward the dismal end of his life— usually for self-serving purposes. The chief modern study of Sage describes his scientific work as totally without value. Another historian has called him a “faux savant.”]
