Hello all, this is Professor Lee Alan Dugatkin, and I’m here to do a Q&A regarding an amazing bit of history in which Thomas Jefferson and the world’s leading naturalist, the Comte de Buffon, engaged in an epic battle regarding Buffon’s claim that all life in the New World was degenerate compared to life in the Old World. I tell the long version of the story in my University of Chicago book, [Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose] (http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Jefferson-Giant-Moose-Natural/dp/0226169146).

Below are two synopses of the basic questions that were at hand. The first is a one-paragraph summary, and the second is a bit longer, and comes directly from the prologue of Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose.

I would be delighted to answer your questions…

Short synopsis

Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose is a tale of both natural history and American history. What started out in the Revolutionary War era as an international dispute over natural history, quickly took on important political overtones. The story revolves around three fascinating individuals. One of these characters --Thomas Jefferson - -is known to every schoolchild. The other two characters --1) the French Count and world-renowned naturalist, George-Louis Leclerc Buffon, who claimed that all life in America was "degenerate," weak and feeble, and 2) a very large, dead moose--are less well known, but equally important to the story. Their interactions lay at the heart of an amazing tale in which Jefferson obsessed over a very large, very dead moose that he believed could help quash early French arrogance toward a fledgling republic in America, and demonstrate that a young America was every bit the equal of a well-established Europe. Despite Jefferson's passionate refutation, the theory of degeneracy far outlived both Buffon and Jefferson; indeed, it seemed to have had a life of its own. It continued to have scientific, economic and political implications for 100 years, and also began to works its way into the literature of the day, with folks like Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, Washington Irving, Immanuel Kant, John Keats and Lord Byron entering the fray. Eventually the degeneracy argument died; but it did not die an easy death.

Longer synopsis (from the Prologue to Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose)

Americans of the Revolutionary War era were understandably touchy about their standing compared with that of Europeans. It was one thing for the Europeans, particularly the French, to refer to Americans as upstarts, malcontents, and threats to the monarchy—in a sense many of them were all that. It was another matter entirely to suggest that all life forms in America were degenerate compared to those of the Old World. Yet that is precisely what Count Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon, one of France’s most distinguished Enlightenment thinkers, and one of the best-known names in Europe at the time, claimed. In his massive encyclopedia of natural history, Histoire Naturelle, Buffon laid out what came to be called the theory of degeneracy. He argued that, as a result of living in a cold and wet climate, all species found in America were weak and feeble. What’s more, any species imported into America for economic reasons would soon succumb to its new environment and produce lines of puny, feeble offspring. America, Buffon told his readers, is a land of swamps, where life putrefies and rots. And all of this from the pen of the preeminent natural historian of his century. There was no escaping the pernicious effects of the American environment—not even for Native Americans. They too were degenerate. For Buffon, Indians were stupid, lazy savages. In a particularly emasculating swipe, he suggested that the genitalia of Indian males were small and withered—degenerate—for the very same reason that the people were stupid and lazy. The environment and natural history had never before been used to make such sweeping claims, essentially damning an entire continent in the name of science. Buffon’s American degeneracy hypothesis was quickly adopted and expanded by men such as the Abbé Raynal and the Abbé de Pauw, who believed that Buffon’s theory did not go far enough. They went on to claim that the theory of degeneracy applied equally well to transplanted Europeans and their descendants in America. These ideas became mainstream enough that Raynal felt comfortable sponsoring a contest in France on whether the discovery of America had been beneficial or harmful to the human race. Books on American degeneracy were popular, reproduced in multiple editions, and translated from French into a score of languages including German, Dutch, and English; they were the talk of the salons of Europe and the manor houses of America. And it wasn’t just the intelligentsia of the age who were paying attention—this topic was discussed in newspapers, journals, poems, and schoolbooks. Thomas Jefferson understood the seriousness of Buffon’s accusations, and he would have none of it. He was convinced that the data Buffon and his supporters relied upon was flawed, and possibly even intentionally so. And Jefferson quickly realized the long-term consequences, should the theory of degeneracy take hold. Why would Europeans trade with America, or immigrate to the New World, if Buffon and his followers were correct? Indeed, some very powerful people were already employing the degeneracy argument to stop immigration to America. What’s more, this insipid theory challenged the entire premise of the American Revolution: that man could rise to any heights for which he worked. Jefferson led a full-scale assault against Buffon’s theory of degeneracy to insure that these things wouldn’t happen. He devoted the largest section of the only book he ever wrote—Notes on the State of Virginia—to systematically debunking Buffon’s degeneracy theory, taking special pride in defending American Indians from such pernicious claims. The author of the Declaration of Independence employed more than his rhetorical skills in Notes. Jefferson produced table after table of data that he had compiled, supporting his contentions. As minister to France, Jefferson knew Buffon, and even dined with him on occasion. He was confident that the Count was a reasonable, enlightened man, who would retract his degeneracy theory if he were presented with overwhelming evidence against it. Notes on the State of Virginia was just one weapon in Jefferson’s arsenal. Jefferson also wanted to present Buffon with tangible evidence—something the Count could touch. He tried with the skin of a panther, and then the bones of a hulking mastodon that had roamed America in the distant past, but Buffon didn’t budge. Jefferson’s most concerted effort in terms of hands-on evidence was to procure a very large, dead, stuffed American moose—antlers and all—to hand Buffon personally, in effect saying “see.” This moose became a symbol for Jefferson—a symbol of the quashing of European arrogance in the form of degeneracy. Jefferson went to extraordinary lengths to obtain this giant moose. Both while he was being chased from Monticello by the British in the early 1780s, and then later while he was in France drumming up support and money for the revolutionary cause in the mid-to-late 1780s, Jefferson spent an inordinate amount of time imploring his friends to send him a stuffed, very large moose. In the midst of correspondences with James Monroe, George Washington, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin over urgent matters of state, Jefferson found the time to repeatedly write his colleagues—particularly those who liked to hunt—all but begging them to send him a moose that he could use to counter Buffon’s ideas on degeneracy. The hunt for this moose, and the attempt to get it shipped to Jefferson, and then Buffon in Paris, is the stuff of movies. The plotline involved teams of twenty men hauling a giant dead moose through miles of snow and frozen forests, a carcass falling apart in transit, antlers that didn’t quite belong to the body of the moose but could be “fixed on at pleasure,” crates lost in transit, irresponsible shippers, and a despondent Jefferson thinking all hope of receiving this critical piece of evidence was lost. Eventually, though, the seven-foot-tall stuffed moose made it to Jefferson, and then to Buffon. Yet, despite Jefferson’s passionate refutation, the theory of degeneracy far outlived Buffon and Jefferson; indeed, it seemed to have a life of its own. It continued to have scientific, economic, and political implications, but also began to work its way into literature and philosophy. On one side were those who continued to promulgate degeneracy—people such as the philosopher Immanuel Kant and the British poet John Keats, who described America as the single place where “great unerring Nature once seems wrong.” On the other side was a cadre that included Washington Irving, who mocked Buffon’s theory in The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, and Henry David Thoreau, who used his essay *Walking” as a platform “to set against Buffon’s account of this part of the world and its productions.” This group saw America as a vast, almost unlimited land of resources, a place where nature shines on a world of healthy, hardworking people: and they labored (quite successfully) to make this idea part of our national identity. All of this can be traced back to the degeneracy argument between Buffon and Jefferson, and, to some extent to Jefferson’s moose itself. Eventually the degeneracy argument died; but it did not die an easy death …