The US President begged for a moose just to resist the French regional discrimination

In the 1780s, before Thomas Jefferson became the third president of the United States, he was living in Paris as ambassador to France. For a while, he wrote to his friends several times, which basically translated to: Send me a moose! Send me a moose!

Jefferson was a founding father of the United States and the main drafter of the Declaration of Independence. He wanted the moose for the United States - to fight back against regional discrimination against the United States. The person he wanted to fight back was the Frenchman Comte de Buffon, who was known as the "father of natural history in the second half of the 18th century."

Left: Thomas Jefferson | Rembrandt Peale / whitehousehistory.org

Right: Georges-Louis Leclerc, Count of Buffon｜François-Hubert Drouais / Musée Buffon à Montbard

Buffon's "Theory of American Degeneration"

If you are asked "Who is Buffon", you may be confused. But if you mention the essays about animals in the Chinese textbook, such as "Horse", "Squirrel", and "Oryx", or the "Buffon's Needle Experiment" in the math textbook, you may recall the past.

Buffon was not only an essayist who loved animals, but was also elected as a member of the French Royal Academy of Sciences for his achievements in mathematics. His most famous work is the 44-volume masterpiece "Natural History" (the last 8 volumes were completed by French zoologist Lacepède after Buffon's death). The content introduces all things in nature, including animals, plants, humans, geography, and astronomy. It is hailed as a classic that integrates science, literature, and art.

"Natural History" was once translated as "Natural History" because of its English title "Natural History"; but "History" comes from the Latin "Historia", which means "investigation" rather than "history" in the modern context | Wikimedia Commons

As a representative work of the Enlightenment era, Natural History has a profound influence in Europe and laid the foundation for the evolutionary thought of Lamarck and Darwin in later generations. However, due to the time period, Buffon's views seem to be rather one-sided today. For example, Buffon believed that there are perfect species and degenerate "inferior" species, and that biological "degeneration" is the result of environmental influences, because there are certain substances in the atmosphere and soil that cause biological decline.

Illustration of "Natural History", tapir, used by Buffon as evidence that "American animals are weak" | Wikimedia Commons

The main example he used to support this view came from the Americas across the ocean. Buffon concluded that the Americas did not have the huge animals such as elephants, camels, hippos, lions, etc. that the Eurasian and African continents had; the native animals in the Americas, such as sloths, were small and incompetent, and would soon be wiped out if they lived with more "advanced" animals and humans. Even the four-legged animals that existed in both the New and Old Worlds - bears, deer, wolves, etc. - the bears and wolves in the Americas were smaller, and the deer had shorter horns. Therefore, the natural environment of this new continent was "weak".

Buffon believed that animals in the Americas were inferior to those in the Old World | Wikimedia Commons

Buffon further believed that under the influence of the "weak" external environment, even if the livestock introduced by European colonists could reproduce in America, their offspring would gradually become stunted. So, what would happen to the descendants of Europeans who had lived in America for several generations? The answer seems to be self-evident. However, Buffon was still "lenient in his writing". He was still positive about European immigrants and believed that Europeans would eventually transform the New World into a more suitable place for survival.

Americans fight back against regionalism

Later, Dutch philosopher Cornelis de Pauw further expanded on the theory of American degeneration.

De Bord never visited America or met an indigenous person, but he wrote Philosophical Research on the American People with rich imagination based on a large number of previous works, which caused a strong response in Europe. His views, such as "American Indians are timid and stupid, and they are as ignorant as babies until the end of their lives", "None of the languages ​​of various ethnic groups in America can count to more than three, so they cannot invent astronomical calendars", "Europeans who settled in America degenerated, and animals also degenerated... The root cause lies in the bad air, stagnant water and poisonous gas evaporated from uncultivated land", were quite sensational at the time.

In the 1770s, a pair of moose were brought from North America to England for breeding; in 1773, British painter George Stubbs made this pencil drawing of a moose calf.｜Glasgow University Library, Scotland/The Bridgeman Art Library

Jefferson couldn't stand such talk. In addition to politics, Jefferson was also interested in science and technology. His modified plowshare won a prize from the French Agricultural Society. He was determined to dispel the rumor himself and prove to Europe that the emerging country of the United States had potential. First, he wanted to prove to Buffon that the animals in the United States were not so weak.

In the 1780s, Jefferson visited Buffon in Europe. During the conversation, Jefferson mentioned that "European reindeer are only as tall as the belly of a North American moose", but Buffon obviously did not believe that there were such tall animals in America. Jefferson decided to open Buffon's eyes, and he quickly wrote to his friends in the United States, asking them to send a specimen of a moose to France as soon as possible.

Moose, the largest subspecies is the Alaskan moose (Alces alces gigas) of America | Donna Dewhurst / Wikimedia Commons

However, the specimens sent to Paris took a year to arrive, and part of them rotted and their antlers fell off. When the specimens were taxidermied, they were paired with antlers of red deer. According to Jefferson, Buffon promised to correct these erroneous views in his next volume of Natural History. However, not long after receiving the moose, Buffon died before he could write the next volume, and it is unknown whether he really changed his prejudice against America.

Searching for living mastodons

In order to find more evidence of the power of American animals, Jefferson turned his attention to prehistoric giants. One of the creatures that attracted his attention the most was the American mastodon. In Jefferson's time, the American mastodon was confused with the "mammoth" until 1806 when the French naturalist Cuvier distinguished the two.

In 1739, a French expedition discovered fossilized mastodon bones and teeth along the Ohio River in what is now Big Bone Lick National Park. Jefferson believed that the bones represented animals that were likely still alive in the undeveloped wilds of the West, and that their size was enough to show that American animals were strong and not weak. But in fact, mastodons had already become extinct 12,000 years ago.

Mastodon fossils at the Natural History Museum in Senckenberg, Germany | Ghedoghedo / Wikimedia Commons

Charles Peale's painting "Discovery of the Mastodon", the excavated mastodon is mounted and exhibited in Peale's self-built museum. This is the world's first fully assembled prehistoric skeleton fossil | Wikimedia Commons

Another animal that caught Jefferson's attention was named Megalonyx ("Big Claw"). In 1796, Jefferson received some large mammal fossils from West Virginia. The restored skeleton looked a bit like a bear, but larger, with huge claws, and a very shocking appearance. Jefferson believed that this was a huge carnivore, estimated to be three times the size of a lion, which could reflect the vitality of the land of America and counter the "American Degeneration Theory". He also commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition to search for traces of mastodons and "Big Claws" in the western United States, but of course nothing was found.

Jefferson was so fond of these giant ancient vertebrates that he collected many fossils in the White House. However, he only called the fossils he collected "bones" because he always believed that these animals still existed.

Fossils from the American Museum of Natural History | Daderot / Wikimedia Commons

The "giant claw" in Jefferson's mind is actually the giant clawed sloth that became extinct 11,000 years ago. It is about 3 meters long and weighs more than 1,000 kilograms when grown. It can lift its forelimbs in a semi-erect posture. Like its close living relative, the two-toed sloth, this sloth feeds on plants, and its huge claws are mainly used to tear leaves. Its distribution covers most of the United States.

In honor of Jefferson, this ground sloth is now named Megalonyx jeffersonii. Although Jefferson still failed to change the impression of Europeans as "regional blacks", it is undeniable that his work promoted the development of paleontological research in the United States, and he is also considered one of the founders of American vertebrate paleontology.

Author: Yaohua

Editor: pee pee shrimp, maimai

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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