104).
But he had more to say on the other side, that of the mutability of species, and it is these tentative views that his commentators have assumed to have been his real sentiments or belief, and for this reason place Buffon among the evolutionists, though he had little or no idea of evolution in the enlarged and thoroughgoing sense of Lamarck.
He states, however, that the presence of callosities on the legs of the camel and llama "are the unmistakable results of rubbing or friction; so also with the callosities of baboons and the pouched monkeys, and the double soles of man's feet."[133] In this point he anticipates Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck.

As we shall see, however, his notions were much less firmly grounded than those of Erasmus Darwin, who was a close observer as well as a profound thinker.
In his chapter on the _Degeneration des Animaux_, or, as it is translated, "modification of animals," Buffon insists that the three causes are climate, food, and domestication.

The examples he gives are the sheep, which having originated, as he thought, from the mufflon, shows marked changes.

The ox varies under the influence of food; reared where the pasturage is rich it is twice the size of those living in a dry country.

The races of the torrid zones bear a hump on their shoulders; "the zebu, the buffalo, is, in short, only a variety, only a race of our domestic ox." He attributed the camel's hump to domesticity.
He refers the changes of color in the northern hare to the simple change of seasons.
He is most explicit in referring to the agency of climate, and also to time and to the uniformity of nature's processes in causing variation.
Writing in 1756 he says: "If we consider each species in the different climates which it inhabits we shall find perceptible varieties as regards size and form; they all derive an impress to a greater or less extent from the climate in which they live.