44 



lor has therefore separated their nature as far as the 

 extent of the scale of animal life allowed to this planet 

 would per/nit, it seems perverse to declare it the same, 

 from a partial resemhlance of their tusks and bones. 

 But to whatever animal we ascribe these remains, it is 

 certain such a one has existed in America, and that it 

 has been the larjrestof all terrestrial hcings. It should 

 have sufficed to have rescued the earth it inhabited, and 

 the atmosphere it hreathed, from the imputation of im- 

 potence in the conception and nourishment of animal 

 life on a large scale : to have stifled, in its birth, the 

 opinion of a writer, the most learned too of all others 

 in the science of animal history, that in the new world, 

 * La nature vivante est beaucoup moins agissante, beau- 

 coup moins forte ;'* that nature is less active, less ener- 

 getic on one side of the globe than she is on the other. 

 As if both sides 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 ; as if 

 the fruits and grains from that soil and sun yielded a 

 less rich chyle, gave less extension to the solids and 

 fluids of the hody, or produced sooner in the cartilages, 

 membranes and fibres, that rigidity which restrains all 

 further extension, and terminates animal growth. The 

 truth is, that a Pigmy and a Patagonian, Mouse and a 

 Mammoth, derive their dimensions from the same nutri- 

 tive juices. Tiie difference of increnient dej)eM(ls on 

 circumstances unsearchable to beings with our capaci- 

 ties. Every race of animals seems to have received 

 from their maker certain laws of extension at the time 

 of their formation. Their elaborative organs were 

 formed to produce this, while proper obstacles were op- 

 posed to its further progress. Below these limits they 

 cannot fall, nor rise above them. What intermediate 

 station they shall take may depend on soil, on climate, 

 on food, on a careful choice of breeders. But all the 

 manna of heaven would never raise the mouse to the 

 bulk of the mammoth. 



♦ Buflfon, xviii, 122 edit. Paris, 1764. 



