MEGAFAUNA: Jefferson saw the moose Alces alces as incontrovertible evidence against the European idea that American fauna was somehow small and weak.
Image: Photograph by Richard Ross
In Brief
- European naturalists led by Count Buffon developed a theory of American biological degeneracy during the Revolutionary War era.
- Thomas Jefferson attacked the theory, fearing that it could impede the economic and cultural maturation of the fledgling U.S.
- A large moose was a key piece of evidence that Jefferson hoped to present to Buffon to get him to recant the degeneracy theory.
Thomas Jefferson is best known for expressing in words the justification for American independence. But Jefferson the politician and statesman coexisted with Jefferson the scientist. The combination led Jefferson to invest a great amount of time and energy in debunking a popular European conceit—that America was a degenerate place. American degeneracy allegedly was evident in its weak and stunted flora, fauna and people.
Jefferson’s effort to illustrate the complete biological equality of the New and Old Worlds went beyond mere pride in his home continent—he and other founders believed that a successful rebuttal was necessary to ensure the growth and prosperity of their new country. The fight was important enough to have been noted in a eulogy at Jefferson’s funeral in 1826 by New York Senator Samuel Latham Mitchill, who called the antidegeneracy campaign the equivalent of proclaiming independence a second time. And one piece of concrete evidence that Jefferson thought he needed to win the day was a specimen of an American moose.
This article was originally published with the title Jefferson's Moose.
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2 Comments
Add CommentI was surprised to see this article and its review of the Buffon-Jefferson debate on the inferiority of the Americas. I will never forget my first reading of NOTES many years ago and the digression on the size of moose antlers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStill, I am amazed that the author missed Antonelli Gerbi's THE DISPUTE OF THE NEW WORLD. This debate encompasses much more than Jefferson and the others of that time, who were swept up in a clash that lasted centuries (it extends all the way through the modern view that America is somehow culturally inferior to Europe and can be found referenced in even Lews' DODSWORTH).
The exhaustive, amazingly researched and wonderful work by Antonelli Gerbi is pretty much the definitive summary on this overall topic.
Dear chslittle, thank you for for posting on my paper. I could not agree with you more about what a superb book Gerbi produced. The only reason I didn't mention it in the SciAm article was space. In my book, "Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose," I cite Gerbi's important contributions many times. The only reason I did not list the Gerbi book under the "more to explore" tab in my SciAm article is that, well, let's face it, even though the Gerbi book is a masterpiece, it is not the sort of thing most folks would pick up and read (it is huge and highly technical).
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