Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber Note

Emphasized text displayed as _Italic Text._ Whole and fractional parts of numbers are displayed: 33-1/2

_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. IV.

London:

PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR,
AND SOLD BY H. D. SYMONDS, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1807.

T. Gillet, Printer, Wild-court.

CONTENTS OF THE FOURTH VOLUME.

Page

_Infancy continued_ 1

Chap. III. _Of Puberty_ 23

Chap. IV. _A Description of Man_ 62

Chap. V. _Of Old Age and Death_ 95

Chap. VI. _Of the Sense of Seeing_ 137

Chap. VII. _Of the Sense of Hearing_ 159

Chap. VIII. _Of the Senses in General_ 171

Chap. IX. _Of the Varieties in the Human Species_ 190

_Directions for placing the Plates._

Page 91, Fig. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.

BUFFON'S NATURAL HISTORY.

INFANCY CONTINUED.

Infants, when newly born, sleep much, though with frequent interruptions. As they are also in frequent want of nourishment, they ought in the day to receive the breast every time they awake. The greatest part of the first month they pass in sleep, and do not seem to awake, but from a sense of pain or hunger; their sleep, therefore, generally terminates with a fit of crying. As they are compelled to remain in the same position in the cradle, confined by shackles, their situation soon becomes painful. Their excrements, whose acrimony is offensive to their tender and very delicate skin, often render them wet and chilly; and in this distress, by their cries alone can they call for relief. With the utmost assiduity ought this relief to be given them; or rather such inconveniences ought to be prevented by frequently changing part of their cloathing both night and day. The Savages deem this an object so essential, that though their changes of skins cannot possibly be so frequent as ours of linen, yet they supply this deficiency by the use of other substances; of which there is no necessity to be sparing. In North-America, a quantity of dust obtained from wood that has been gnawed by worms is placed at the bottom of the cradle, and which they renew as often as appears requisite. On this powder the infant is laid, and covered with skins; and though a bed of feathers, it is pretended, cannot be more soft and easy, yet it is not used to indulge the delicacy of the child, but to keep it clean; which in effect it does, by drawing off the moisture of every kind. In Virginia, they place the child naked upon a plank covered with cotton, and provided with a hole as a passage for the excrement. Here the cold is often unfavourable to such a practice; but it is almost general in the East of Europe, and especially in Turkey. This custom has this further advantage, it precludes all care, and is the most certain method of preventing the ill effects which too frequently result from the usual negligence of nurses. It is maternal affection alone which is capable of supporting that continual vigilance, that minute attention, which a new-born infant requires. How then can such vigilance, such care, be expected from a mercenary groveling nurse?

Some nurses desert their children for several hours without feeling the smallest anxiety; and others are so cruel as to be unaffected with their cries; then do the helpless innocents seem to be in a kind of despair; then do they exert every effort of which they are capable; and, till their strength actually forsakes them, implore assistance by their cries. If these violent agitations do not create some distemper, they discompose, however, the temperament and constitution of the child, and even influence perhaps its disposition.

There is another abuse which lazy nurses are frequently guilty of: instead of employing effectual methods for pleasing the infant, they rock it furiously in the cradle; this procures a momentary cessation of its cries, by confusing its brain, and if long continued stuns the child into a sleep. But this sort of sleep is merely a palliative, and so far is the agitation by which it was obtained from removing the cause of complaint, that it may disorder the head and stomach, and be the foundation of future disorders of very fatal consequence.

Before children are put into the cradle, we ought to be certain they want nothing, and they should never be rocked with such violence as to confound or stun them. If their sleep is not sound, a slow and equal motion of the cradle is sufficient to render it so; nor ought they to be rocked often, for if accustomed to this motion they will not sleep without it. Though children in good health should sleep long and spontaneously, yet the temperament of the body may be injured by too much. In this case they should be roused by gentle motion; their ears ought to be amused with some soft and agreeable sounds, and their eyes with some brilliant and striking objects. It is at this age they receive their first impressions from the sense, and these are, perhaps, of more future importance than many may imagine.

The eyes of infants are always directed to the strongest light in the room, and if from the child's situation only one eye can be directed to it, the other, for want of exercise, will remain more weak. To prevent this inconvenience the foot of the cradle ought to be so placed that the light, whether it comes from a window or a candle, may front it. In this position both eyes receive it alike, and thus by exercise acquire equal strength. If one eye becomes stronger than the other, the child will squint; for it is incontestably proved, that the inequality of strength in the eyes is the cause of squinting.

For the first and second months, and even for the third and fourth, the infant, especially when its constitution is weak and delicate, ought to receive no nourishment but milk from the breast. Whatever be its strength, it may receive material injury if any other food is given it during the first month. In Holland, in Italy, in Turkey, and in general over all the Levant, children have nothing but the breast for a whole year. The savages of Canada suckle them till they are four or five, and sometimes six or seven years of age. With us most nurses have not a sufficiency of milk to satisfy the demands of their children; and in order to be frugal of what they have, they feed them, even from the first, with a composition of boiled flour and milk. This nourishment allays their hunger; but as their stomachs and bowels are yet too weak to digest a gross and viscous substance, they suffer by it, and not unoften die by indigestions.

The milk of animals may supply the deficiency of that of the mother in cases of necessity; but then it is highly necessary the child should receive it, by sucking the animal's teat, in order that it may be of an equal and proper warmth, and that by the action of the muscles in sucking it may mix with the saliva, which facilitates digestion. In the country I have known several peasants who had no other nurses but ewes; and these peasants were as vigorous as any that had been suckled by their mothers.

After two or three months, when the child has acquired strength, they begin to give it food a little more solid, consisting of a kind of bread made of flour and milk, which disposes the stomach to receive the common bread, and such other nutriment as it will afterwards be accustomed to.

As an introduction to the use of solid food, the consistency of liquid food is gradually increased, and therefore, after having habituated the child to flour and milk boiled, they next give it bread diluted in some convenient fluid. During the first year infants are incapable of mastication, their teeth still continuing enveloped in the gums, which are so soft that their feeble resistance can produce no effect on any solid matter. Some nurses, especially among the common people, chew the food first, and then give it to the child, a practice from which, before we reflect upon it, we ought to banish every idea of disgust, which can make no impression upon infants. So far from feeling anything of that kind, they as readily receive food from the mouth of the nurse as from her breasts; nay it seems to proceed, from a natural propensity, by its being introduced in a number of countries widely different from each other. We find it in Italy, in Turkey, in the greatest part of Asia, in America, in Canada, &c. I conceive it to be highly useful, from being the only method by which the stomach of children can be furnished with the saliva that is required for the digestion of solid food. If the nurse chews a bit of bread, her saliva dilutes it, and renders it more nutritious than if it had been moistened in any other liquid, yet this practice is only necessary till they are supplied with teeth to chew their food, and dilute it with their own saliva.

The incisores, or fore teeth, are eight in number, four in the front of each jaw-bone. These generally appear first, though seldom till seven, eight, or ten months. Some few infants have been born with teeth so sharp as to cut their nurse's nipple. The original substance of the teeth is lodged in sockets, and covered by the gums, to the bottom of which it extends its roots, and pressing forward by little and little, at length forces its way through them. Though this operation is natural, it is not, however, consonant to the general laws of Nature, which constantly operate upon the human body, without exciting any painful sensation. Here Nature makes a violent and an excruciating effort, which is sometimes attended with fatal consequences. In breeding their teeth children lose their sprightliness, and become peevish and restless. The gums are at first red and swelled, and afterwards, when the pressure is ready to intercept the course of the blood in the veins, they appear white. They are constantly applying their fingers to the affected part as if endeavouring to assuage its irritation: they obtain further relief by putting into their mouth a bit of ivory, coral, or any other hard and polished substance they are supplied with, which they rub on that part of the gums that is most affected. This action relaxes the parts, and affords a momentary cessation of the pain; it also helps to attenuate the membrane of the gum, which, from the double pressure it then sustains, must break the more easily; yet this laceration, or rupture of the gums, is frequently attended with no small degree of pain and danger. When the gums are more firm than usual, by the solidity of the fibres of which they are composed, their resistance to the action of the tooth is more obstinate, and occasions an inflammation, with all its deadly symptoms. In order to preclude this, an incision may be successfully made on the gum, by means of which minute operation the inflammation ceases, and the teeth obtain a free passage.

The canine, or dog teeth, which are next to the incisores, are in number four, and commonly appear in the ninth or tenth month. About the end of the first, or in the course of the second year, sixteen other teeth appear, which are called molares, or grinders, four of which are situated on each side of the dog teeth. The periods for the cutting of the teeth vary in different children, and though it is pretended that those of the upper jaw usually appear first, yet it often happens that they are preceded by those of the under.

The incisores, the canine, and the first four of the molares, are generally shed in the fifth, sixth, or seventh year, but they are commonly replaced by others in the seventh year, though sometimes not till the age of puberty. The shedding of these sixteen teeth is occasioned by the expansion in the gums for the new set which are at the bottom of the sockets, and by their growth press out the first. There not being any beneath the other grinders they remain, unless forced out by accident, and when lost they are hardly ever recovered.

There are four other teeth still, which are situated at the extremity of each jaw, but which every person does not have. These seldom appear till the age of puberty, and sometimes later; they are called dentes sapientiæ, or wisdom-teeth, and either appear one after another, or two at a time. The only reason of there being a variety in the number of teeth, which is from 28 to 32, is the irregularity of the wisdom-teeth. Women, it has been observed, have generally fewer teeth than men.

Some authors pretend that the teeth would continue to grow through life, if it were not for their continual attrition, occasioned by the food on which man subsists, and increase in size (as is the case in several animals) in proportion as he advances in age. But this opinion is contradicted by experience; for persons who live wholly on liquid nutriment have not teeth longer than those who live on solid food, and if any thing is capable of wearing the teeth, it is rather their mutual friction one against another than mastication. Besides, they possibly deceive themselves by confounding teeth with tusks, as to the growth of the former in certain animals. The tusks of the wild boar and elephant, for example, continue to grow during life, but it is highly improbable that the teeth of either, when once arrived at their natural size, should afterwards increase. Tusks have a greater affinity, by far, with horns than with teeth; but this is not the proper place to enter into their specific differences, nor shall any thing further be added, than that the first set of teeth in children is of a substance less solid than the subsequent one, and more loosely fixed in the jaws.

It is often asserted, that the first hair of children is always brown, but that it presently falls off, and is succeeded by hair of a different colour. Whether the remark is just or not I cannot determine, but the hair of most children is fair, and, in many instances, almost white. In some it is red, and in others black, yet in those who are to have fair or brown complexions, the hair in the earliest stage of infancy, is fair in a greater or less degree. Those who give a promise of future fairness have generally blue eyes, those likely to be red have a yellowish shade in their eyes, and those who will be brown have a darker yellow; but colours are very imperfectly distinguished in the eyes of new-born infants, because they have almost all the semblance of blue.

When a child is suffered to cry too violently, and too long, it may in consequence be afflicted with a rupture, in which case an early application of bandages is necessary; with this assistance the complaint is removed with ease, without it the disease may last for life.

The limits of my plan admit not a detail of every disease incidental to children. I shall only remark, that worms, and all verminous diseases, very evidently owe their origin to the nature of their food. Milk is a kind of chyle, an unadulterated nutriment; it consists of organic and generative substances, and, therefore, if not digested by the stomach, and made use of in the expansion and growth of the body, it assumes, by its essential activity, other forms, and produces animated beings, particularly worms, in such quantities, that the infant is often in danger of falling a victim to them. A part of the bad effects that accrue from worms, might probably be prevented, by allowing children to drink a little wine, because all fermented liquors counteract the generation of worms, and besides contain but few organic nutritive particles: it is chiefly by its action upon the solids that wine gives strength, and it may be rather said to fortify the body than to strengthen it. Besides, the generality of children are fond of wine, at least easily accustomed to drink it.

However delicate the frame may be in infancy, it is yet less sensible of cold than during any other period of life. As the pulse of infants is more quick than that of adults, it may, from this circumstance alone, be concluded, that the internal heat is proportionally greater. On the same principle it is hardly to be doubted, that of this heat small animals have a greater share than the large; it has invariably been found, that, in the same degree the animal is small, the motion of the heart and arteries is proportionally vigorous and quick; and this is ever the case in the same as well as in different species. The pulse of an infant, or of a man of small stature, is more frequent than that of a grown person, or a man of a large size. The pulse of an ox is slower, and a dog quicker than that of a man; and so precipitate are the motions in the heart of an animal still smaller, as a sparrow, for instance, they can hardly be counted.

Till the age of three years the life of an infant is highly precarious. In the course of the ensuing two or three years, however, it becomes more certain; and at the age of six or seven a child has a greater probability of living than at any other age. By consulting Simpson's tables of the degrees of mortality, at different ages, as applicable to London, it appears, that, of a certain number of children, born at one time, above a fourth of them died in the first year, above a third in two years, and, at least, one half in the first three years. If this calculation is just a wager might be proposed, that an infant, when born, would not live three years. A man who dies at the age of twenty-five is to be lamented for the short duration of his life; and yet, according to these tables, one half of mankind die before the age of three years, consequently, every individual who has passed his third year, far from repining at his fate, ought to consider himself as treated with superior favour by his Creator. But this mortality in children is by no means so great in every place as in London. M. Dupré de St. Maur has proved, by a number of experiments made in France, that one half of the children born at the same time are not extinct in less than seven or eight years. By these experiments it is also shewn, that at the age of five, six, or seven years, the life of a child is more certain than at any other age, and that an equal bet may be laid for 42 years more, whereas in proportion as a child lives beyond five, six, or seven years, the probable number of years it will live decreases. At twelve years, for instance, the equal chance is only for 39 years; at 20, for 33-1/2; at 30, for 20; and thus forward, till the age of 85, when there is an equal chance of living three years longer.[A]

[A] In the course of this volume we shall present our readers with a table, at large, of the different probabilities of human life.

There is one thing very remarkable in the growth of the human body. The foetus in the womb continues to increase more and more in equal periods, till the birth. The infant, on the contrary, increases less and less, that is in the same period of time, till the age of puberty, to which it seems to bound, as it were, at once. The foetus, for example, is an inch long in the first month, two inches and a quarter in the second; three inches and a half in the third; five inches and upwards in the fourth; six inches and a half, or even seven inches, in the fifth; eight inches and a half, or nine inches, in the sixth; eleven inches, in the seventh; fourteen inches, in the eighth; and eighteen inches, in the ninth. Although this measurement may vary in different children, yet if the child be 18 inches at its birth, it will hot increase more than six or seven inches in the first year after: that is, at the end of the first year, it will be 24 or 25 inches; of the second, 28 or 29 inches; of the third, only 30, or, at most 32 inches; and from this age till that of puberty, it will not advance more than one inch and a half, or two inches, in the course of each year. From these remarks it is evident that the foetus increases more in a month, towards the close of its residence in the matrix than the infant does in a year, till it arrives at the age of puberty; when Nature seems to make one grand effort to unfold the animal machine, and render her work complete.

So essential is it, that the constitution of the nurse should be sound, and her juices untainted that we have many instances of diseases being imparted from the nurse to the infant, and from the infant to the nurse. Whole villages have been infected with the venereal virus, by nurses suckling the children of other women.

Were mothers to suckle their own offspring it is probable the latter would be more strong and vigorous. The milk of a stranger must be less proper for them than that of the mother, for as the foetus is nourished in the matrix by a fluid, which bears a strong resemblance to the milk that is formed in the breasts, the infant, therefore, is already, as it were, habituated to the milk of its mother. The milk of any other woman, on the contrary, is a nourishment new to the child, and sometimes so different from the other that it is difficult to make the child take it: and if forced will sicken and languish, from not being able to digest the milk of the nurse; a circumstance which, if the consequences are not seasonably prevented by the substitution of another nurse, soon proves fatal.

I cannot help observing, that the custom of crowding a multitude of children into one place, as in the hospitals of large cities, is highly repugnant to what ought to be the grand object proposed, their preservation. The greatest part of such children fall victims to a kind of scurvy, or to other diseases, from which they might have been exempted, had they been brought up in different houses, or rather in the country. The same expence would be sufficient for their support, and an infinity of lives, in which it is well known consist the real riches of a state, would be saved.

At twelve or fifteen months infants begin to lisp. _A_ is the vowel which they articulate with most ease, as it requires nothing more than the opening of the lips, and forcing out the breath. _E_ requires that the tongue should be raised as the lips are opened; and is therefore pronounced with a degree of more trouble. _I_ is attended with greater difficulty, as in the articulation of the vowel the tongue is elevated still more, and made to approach the teeth of the upper jaw. In the pronunciation of _O_, the tongue must be lowered, and the lips contracted; and in that of _U_, the latter must be also contracted, and in some degree extended. The first consonants which children pronounce are those which require the least motion in the organs. Of these the most easy of articulation are _B_ _M_ and _P_. For that of _B_ and _P_ it is simply requisite that the lips should be closed and then opened with quickness, and for that of _M_, that they should be first opened and then closed with celerity. The articulation of the other consonants supposes motions more complicated. The pronunciation of _C_ _D_ _G_ _L_ _N_ _Q_ _R_ _S_ and _T_ depend each on a particular action of the tongue, which it would be very difficult to explain; and for the pronunciation of _F_, a more continued sound is necessary, than for that of any other consonant. _A_ being the most easily articulated of the vowels, as are _B_ _P_ and _M_, of the consonants, we need not wonder that the first words which children pronounce, in every country, should be composed of, that vowel, and of those consonants; and that, for example, in every language, _Baba_, _Mama_, _Papa_, should be the primitive articulations. They are the most familiar sounds to man, and the most natural to him, because the most easily pronounced, and the letters of which they are composed must exist wherever there is any typical mode for the denotation of sounds.

It is to be observed, however, that as the sounds of several consonants are nearly similar; those, for instance, of _E_ and _P_, of _C_ and _S_, of _K_ and _Q_, in certain cases; of _D_ and _T_, of _F_ and _V_, of _G_ and _J_, of _G_ and _K_, of _L_ and _R_, so there may be many languages in which such consonants are not to be found. But in every language, there must be a _B_ or a _P_, a _C_ or an _S_, a _K_ or a _Q_, a _D_ or a _T_, an _F_ or a _V_ consonant, a _G_ or a _J_ consonant; an _L_ or an _R_, and in the most contracted of all alphabets, there cannot be less than six or seven consonants, for of that number there are simple sounds, which have all a very sensible difference from each other. Those children who do not readily articulate _R_, substitute _L_ for it; and in the place of _T_ they articulate _D_. Indeed _L_ and _D_ require more difficult movements in the organs than either _R_ or _T_; and it is from this difference, and from the choice of consonants more or less easy of articulation, that the softness or the harshness of a language proceeds. But on this subject it would be superfluous to enlarge.

Some children pronounce distinctly, and repeat whatever is said to them, at two years, though the generality do not speak for the first two years and a half, and often not so early. It has been observed, that those who are most backward, never speak with the same facility as those who begin to articulate more early, and that those who are in that respect the most forward, may learn to read before the expiration of the third year. Some I have myself known, who had begun to read at two years, and who read to admiration at four. After all, it is difficult to determine whether there is any advantage to be derived from such premature education. With so little success indeed, is it generally attended, that we see and hear of numbers, who, though they had been prodigies at the age of four, eight, twelve, and sixteen years, are found, however, at those of twenty-five, or thirty, to be downright block-heads, or men of very inferior abilities. _I_ am convinced, therefore, that education is the best, which does not compel Nature, and which is proportioned to the strength and capacity of the child.