378 DIFFERENCES OF STATURE. 



eloquence and sound reasoning in vindicating the savage 

 nations of America from the aspersions of the great French 

 naturalist, as he showed energy and perseverance in assert- 

 ing the liberties of his own countrymen ; wisdom and firm- 

 ness in fulfilling the duties of their chief magistrate. In 

 the following remarks he has brought forwards the mammoth 

 in opposition to those learned theories : the reasoning is 

 equally applicable to the Patagonians, Caribs, and other 

 tribes of powerful men, which, being in actual existence, 

 afford a safer ground of conclusion respecting the present 

 capabilities of the climate, soil, and air of America, than 

 those colossal remains of an extinct species, which may 

 have belonged to a very different order of things. 



" It (the mammoth) should liave sufiiced to rescue the 

 earth it inhabited, and the atmosphere it breathed, from the 

 imputation of impotence in the conception and nourishment 

 of animal life on a large scale; to stifle in its birth the 

 opinion of a vvriter, the most learned of all in the science 

 of animal history, that, in the New World, living nature is 

 much less active, much less energetic, than in tb.e Old : — 

 as if both sides of the globe were not warmed by the same 

 genial sun ; as if a soil of the same chemical composition 

 was less capable of elaboration into animal nutriment in 

 America that in the ancient continent; as if the fruits and 

 grains from that soil and sun yielded a less rich cliyle, gave 

 less extension to the solids and fluids of the body, or pro- 

 duced sooner in the cartilages, membranes, and fibres, that 

 rigidity which restrains all further extension, and terminates 

 animal grow^th. The truth is, that a pigmy and a Patago- 

 nian, a mouse and a mammoth, derive their dimensions 

 from the same nutritive juices ; the difference of increment 

 depends on circumstances unsearchable to beings with our 

 capacities. All races of animals seem to have received from 

 their Maker certain laws of extension at the time of their 

 formation. Their elaborative organs were formed to pro- 

 duce this, while proper obstacles were opposed to all further 

 progress. Below these limits they cannot fall, nor rise 

 above them. What intermediate station they shall take, 



