394 Memorial of George Brown Gbode. 



In 1 78 1 appeared Jefferson's Notes on Virginia. This was the first 

 comprehensive treatise upon the topography, natural history, and natural 

 resources of one of the United States, and was the precursor of the great 

 library of scientific reports which have since been issued by the State and 

 Federal Governments. 



The book, although hastily prepared to meet a special need, and not 

 put forth as a formal essay upon a scientific topic, was, if measured by its 

 influence, the most important scientific work as yet published in America. 

 The personal history and the public career of Thomas Jefferson are so 

 familiar to all that it would be an idle task to repeat them here. Had he 

 not been a master in statecraft he would have been a master of science. 

 It is probable that no two men have done so much for science in America 

 as Jefferson and Agassiz — not so much by their direct contributions to 

 knowledge as by the immense weight which they gave to scientific inter- 

 ests by their advocacy. 



Many pages of Jefferson's Notes on Virginia are devoted to the discus- 

 sion of Buffon's statements: (i) That the animals common to both 

 continents are smaller in the New World ; ( 2 ) that those which are 

 peculiar to the New are on a smaller scale; (3) that those which have 

 been domesticated in both have degenerated in America, and (4) that, 

 on the whole, America exhibits fewer species. He successfully over- 

 throws the specious and superficial arguments of the eloquent French 

 naturalist, who, it must be remembered, was at this time considered the 

 highest authority living in such matters. Not content with this, when 

 minister plenipotentiary to Europe a few years later he forced Buffon 

 himself to admit his error. 



The circumstance shall be related in the words of Daniel Webster, who 

 was very fond of relating the anecdote : 



It was a dispute in relation to the moose, and in one of the circles of the beaux- 

 esprits in Paris, Mr. Jefferson contended for some characteristics in the formation of 

 the animal, which Buffon stoutly denied. Whereupon Mr. Jefferson wrote from 

 Paris to General John Sullivan, then residing in Durham, New Hampshire, to pro- 

 cure and send him the whole frame of a moose. The General was no little astonished 

 at a request he deemed so extraordinary, but, well acquainted with Mr. Jefferson, 

 he knew he must have sufficient reason for it, so he made a hunting party of his neigh- 

 bors and took the field. They captured a moose of unusual proportions, stripped it 

 to the bone, and sent the skeleton to Mr. Jefferson at a cost of ^50. On its arrival 

 Mr. Jefferson invited Buffon and some other savants to a supper at his house and 

 exhibited his dear-bought specimen. Buffon immediately acknowledged his error. 

 " I should have consulted you, Monsieur," he said, " before publishing my book on 

 Natural History, and then I should have been sure of my facts." 



In still another matter in which he was at variance with Buffon he 

 was manifestly in the right. In a letter to President Madison, of Wil- 

 liam and Mary College, he wrote : 



Speaking one day with M. de Buffon on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he 

 affected to consider chemistry but as cookery and to place the toils of the laboratory 



