242 



this letter to you, with whom shades of difference in 

 political sentiment have not prevented the interchange 

 of good opinion, nor cut off the friendly offices of so- 

 ciety and good correspondence. Tiiis political tole- 

 rance is the more vahied by me, who consider social 

 liarmony as tiie first of human felicities, and the hap- 

 piest moments, those which are given to the effusions 

 of the heart. Accept them sincerely, I pray you, from 

 one who has the honour to be, with sentiments of high 

 respect and attachment. 

 Dear Sir, 

 Your most obedient 



And most humble servant, 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 



The Notes on Virginia were written in Virginia, 

 in the years 1781 and 1782, in answer to certain que- 

 ries proposed to me by Mons. De Marbois, then secre- 

 tary of the French Legation in the United States; and 

 a manuscript copy was delivered to him. A few copies, 

 with some additions, were afterwards, in 1784, printed 

 in Paris, and given to particular friends. In speaking 

 of the animals of America, the theory of M. de Buffon, 

 the Abbe Raynal, and others presented itself to consid- 

 eration. They have supposed there is something in 

 tha soil, climate, and other circumstances of x'\merica, 

 which occasions animal nature to degenerate, not ex- 

 cepting even the man, native or adoptive, physical or 

 moral. This theory, so unfounded and degrading to one 

 third of the globe, was called to the bar of fact and rea- 

 son. Among other proofs adduced in contradiction of 

 this hypothesis, the speech of Logan, an Indian chief, 

 delivered to Lord Dunmore in 1774, was produced, as a 

 specimen of the talents of the aboriginals of this coun- 

 try, and particularly of their eloquence ; and it was be- 

 lieved that Europe had never produced any thing supe- 

 rior to this morsel of eloquence. In order to make it 

 intelligible to the reader, the transaction, on which it 

 was founded, was stated, as it had been generally rela- 



