Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-1788), was perhaps the most important of Charles Darwin's predecessors, Director of the Royal Botanical Garden, and certainly the premier French scientist of the Enlightenment. Buffon conducted experiments investigating a broad range of questions, from the burning effects of the sun's rays to the tensile strength of timber. His studies of plant life led to his creation of a renowned nursery, his zoological interests to his development of an aviary and menagerie.

His massive, thirty-six-volume System of Nature was the most widely collected work of the Enlightenment, reaching more readers than even the classics of Voltaire and Rousseau.

After Buffon's death, however, his importance as a scientist was denigrated, and little information about him has been available in English. This biography, the life work of Jacques Roger, finally gives Buffon his due. Roger transforms Buffon's image from that of a somewhat incoherent courtly naturalist into one of a major philosophical and scientific thinker.

Using Buffon's enormous literary production as the major source of insight into his and his age's beliefs about the natural world, the book is both a biography and an analytical discussion of Buffon's science.