Buffer
a cushion or mechanical apparatus formed with a strong spring, to deaden the concussion between a body in motion and one at rest. Buffers are and cartridge box belts of armies, as well as occasionally to cover the buffers and buff wheels of the cutler, lapidary, and polisher.
BUFFON (bö-fôn'), GEORGE LOUIS LECLERC, COUNT DE, a French naturalist, born in Montbard, Burgundy, Sept. 7, 1707. In 1739 he was appointed Superintendent of the Royal Garden at Paris (now the Jardin des Plantes) and devoted himself to the great work on "Natural History." It value, but it for long had an extraordinary popularity. After an assiduous labor of 10 years the three first volumes were published, and between 1749 and 1767 twelve others, which comprehended the theory of the earth, the nature of animals, and the history of man and the mammalia. The nine following volumes, is now obsolete and of small scientific BUG which appeared from 1770 to 1783, con- tain the history of birds. The five volumes on minerals were published from 1783 to 1788. Of the seven supplementary volumes, of which the last did not appear until after his death in 1788, the fifth formed an independent whole, the most celebrated of all his works. ks. It contains his "Epochs of Nature," in which the author gives a second theory of the earth, very different from that which he had traced in the first volumes, though he assumes at the commencement the air of merely defending and developing the former. His works were translated into almost every European language. He died in Paris, April 16, 1788.