Martinet “Le Grebifoulque, de Cayenne.” [Cayenne grebe-coot] Plate 893

After Comte de Buffon and others.  Plate 893.  “Le Grebifoulque, de Cayenne.”  Cayenne grebe-coot .  From Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux.  Paris, [1749-1804].  9 x 8 (image).   Engraving by Martinet.   Original hand-coloring.  Pencil manuscript below title.  Else, very good condition.  The greatest name in France in the field of natural history during the eighteenth century was the Comte de Buffon (1707-1788).  Known best in America as the target of Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia in which the patriotic American scholar argued against a theory that New World species were inferior, Buffon enjoys a much greater reputation in Europe.  He was to France what Linnaeus was to Sweden, and he is best known as the first natural scientist to postulate that man evolved from apes. His prints from his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux, have a delicacy of drawing and engraving that has lead some to claim that they are the finest ever published.  Buffon believed th