French aristocrat Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon, Comte de Buffon, was one of the eighteenth century’s most prominent naturalists. He wrote an influential science encyclopedia, Historie Naturelle, in which he described his Theory of New World Degeneration. It basically stated that North America’s climate sucked, with the result that life forms there were bound to be stunted and inferior to those in healthier places like Europe. As seen below, that ticked off the US ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, who went to extremes to debunk Buffon’s theory.

Buffon’s Theory of New World Degeneration

Buffon’s Theory of New World Degeneration had sought to explain why to date, with the exception of Benjamin Franklin, the American Colonies had not produced any intellectual giants, great artists, notable poets, or any military geniuses. Buffon argued that North America was a marshy continent that had recently emerged from the sea. The excessive moisture supposedly made the continent’s plants and wildlife inferior to, smaller, and less robust than those of Europe. That also presumably applied to humans born and raised in North America, who could not attain the heights reached by those in Europe’s drier and healthier climate.

Buffon added that even if plants or animals were transported from Europe to America, the poor environment would cause them to degenerate into a pitiable and less virile size. It was a stupid take by an otherwise smart man who had never been to North America, and it should have elicited no more than a scornful chuckle and a shrug. However, it got under Thomas Jefferson’s skin, and he decided to disprove Buffon’s theory. As seen below, he went way out of his way to win the argument.

An Insult to America

Thomas Jefferson could have ignored the Comte de Buffon’s Theory of New World Degeneration and dismissed it as silly pseudoscience. Instead, the American ambassador saw it as an insult to America and its potential greatness. So he set out to challenge the Frenchman with evidence of American bigness. He wrote friends back home, and asked them to measure the size of American animals. Among the responses was one from his friend James Madison, who sent precise measurements of a Virginian weasel, including the “distance between the anus and vulva”.

Like a Founding Father version of Seinfeld’s George Costanza, Jefferson grew ever more obsessed with proving Buffon wrong, as he painstakingly compiled measurements in a table. They included comparisons such as those between 12 pound American otters vs 8.9 European counterparts, and 410 pound American bears vs 153.7 pound European ones. Itching to confront the Frenchman, Jefferson accepted a dinner invitation at Buffon’s home, and headed there armed with his data for a showdown, primed and ready for a confrontation.

Thomas Jefferson Went to Extremes to Prove Buffon Wrong

Ambassador Jefferson showed up at the Comte de Buffon’s home, eager to prove just how wrong his host was, but the French aristocrat diplomatically put him off, delaying the debate for another time. During the dinner, however, somebody mentioned the North American moose. Buffon declared that it was impossible for an animal of the size described to exist in the continent’s poor environment. That made Jefferson see red. Soon as he returned to his residence, he started writing reams of letters to friends and acquaintances back home, begging anybody to kill the biggest moose they could find and ship it to him at the US embassy in Paris.

Finally, New Hampshire’s governor sent out hunters in the dead of winter to bag the biggest bull moose they could find. They did, then dragged it for two weeks through heavy snow back to civilization. A taxidermist stuffed it, then it was shipped to France. Unfortunately, the taxidermist turned out to be incompetent. When the moose arrived at the US embassy in Paris in 1787, it was a decomposing and stinking mess. However, although a putrid mess, it was still a big putrid mess that proved Buffon’s take on the size of American mega fauna wrong. The triumphant ambassador immediately sent the rotting carcass to Buffon, with a letter telling him to picture it with antlers and more fur. Unfortunately, Jefferson never got a retraction: the French aristocrat passed away in 1788, before he could publicly admit that he had been wrong about the bigness of all things American.

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Some Sources & Further Reading

Brodie, Fawn McKay – Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974)

Dugatkin, Lee Alan – Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America (2009)

History Halls – Slavery in Thomas Jefferson’s Plantation

National Public Radio – Thomas Jefferson Needs a Dead Moose Right Now to Defend America