Early Naturalists 33 



farmer, economist and statesman, he indeed was a man of far 

 vision and high achievement, dreamer of dreams and doer of 

 deeds. Writing in the "Magazine of American History" for 

 April, 1885, Mr. Frederic N. Luther says of him : 



' ... In February, 1801, when Congress was vainly 

 trying to untangle the difficulties arising from the tie vote 

 between Jefferson and Burr, when every politician at the 

 capital was busy with schemes and counter-schemes, this man, 

 whose political fate was balanced on a razor's edge, was 

 corresponding with Dr. Wistar in regard to some bones of the 

 mastodon which he had just procured from Shawangunk, 

 Ulster County. Again in 1808, when the excitement over the 

 embargo was highest, when every day brought fresh denuncia- 

 tions of him and his policy, he was carrying on his palaeonto- 

 logical studies in the rooms of the White House itself. . . . 

 Never for a moment, however apparently absorbed in other 

 work, did he lose his warm sympathy with nature. ' ' 



It is amusing to read on the other hand the tribute which 

 his studies called forth from Bryant, then thirteen years old. 



"Go, wretch, resign the Presidential chair, 

 Disclose thy secret measures, foul or fair. 

 Go, search with curious eyes for horned frogs, 

 'Mid the wild wastes of Louisianian bogs ; 

 Or, where the Ohio rolls his turbid stream, 

 Dig for huge bones, thy glory and thy theme." 



One of Jefferson's scientific contemporaries was Buffon, the 

 French evolutionist. Buffon had an idea that the animals of 

 the new world are smaller than their near relatives in the old, 

 and that domesticated types are degenerating in the former as 

 compared with the same types in the latter. These conten- 

 tions were refuted by Jefferson, who exported to Paris speci- 

 mens of several of our large animals as evidence of his 

 contentions. As a result Buffon wrote to Jefferson, ' ' I should 

 have consulted you, Sir, before publishing my 'Natural His- 

 tory,' and then I should have been sure of my facts." 



Jefferson was one of our pioneer plant importers. While 

 minister to Paris he sent to America large numbers of seeds 

 and plants of various sorts. Most of these were failures, 

 among them the olive, the cork oak and the caper. With rice 

 however he was more successful. Noting the great demand 

 for this cereal during Lent in France, and noting further the 

 small importations of American as compared with Italian 

 rice, he set about discovering the reason, and soon ascertained 

 that it was due to the superior quality of the latter grain. 

 In those days importation of plants from one country to 



