37. New World Degeneration?
Count Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon, a prominent eighteenth-century French naturalist and author of Historie Naturelle, a science encyclopedia, rubbed Thomas Jefferson the wrong way. The Frenchman came up with the Theory of New World Degeneration, which held 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 more delicate than those of Europe.
Moreover, if plants or animals were transported from Europe to America, Buffon argued, the poor environment would cause them to degenerate into a pitiable and less virile size. It was a dumb take by a man who had never been to the New World, and it should have elicited no more than a scornful chuckle and a shrug. However, it ticked off Jefferson, and he set out to disprove Buffon’s theory. He went to great lengths – maniacal lengths, even – to win the argument.