HISTORY OF MEXICO. 157 



might be afcribed to other caufes very different. M. de 

 Paw himfelf affirms that if elephants were tranfport- 

 ed to America, as the Portuguefe have attempted, they 

 would meet with the famefortune with camels; that they 

 would not propagate, alrhough they were left in the 

 woods to their own inflincl: ; becaufe the change of 

 aliment and clime is infinitely more fenfibly felt by ele- 

 phants than all other quadrupeds of the largefl kind. 

 He likewife declares in another place, that the caufes 

 which operate to the deftru&ion of thofe animals, that 

 is, the quadrupeds of the new world, are difficulties of a 

 high degree, and at the fame time one of the mod: in- 

 teresting fubjecls of the natural hiflory of the terraqueous 

 globe. Why then does he decide fo pofitively, that the 

 fuppofed inundation was the caufe of their extirpation ? 



BufFon endeavours to perfuade us of the recent inun- 

 dation of America by feveral arguments, to which we 

 will anfwer in a few words. If this continent is as ancient 

 as the other ^ he fays, fpeaking of America, why have fo 

 few men been found there ? The men who have been found 

 there cannot be called few, but in refpect to the very 

 extenfive country which they have inhabited. Thofe 

 who lived in focieties, as the Mexicans, the natives of 

 Michuacan, the Acolhuas, and others who occupied all 

 that very extenfive tra&of the country, which lies be- 

 tween nine and twenty-three degrees of latitude, and 

 two hundred and feventy-one and two hundred and nine- 

 ty-four of longitude, were bodies of people as numerous 

 as thofe of Europe, which we fhall fhew in another dif- 

 fertation y). Thofe who lived more difperfed, formed 



fmaller 



(x) Recherches Philofophiques, parte i. 



(y^ Thefe arguments of the count de Buffon againft the antiquity of Ame- 

 rica, are found in the fixth volume of his Natural Hiftory ; but a little be- 

 fore, in the fame volume, he fays thus : " There have been difcovered in Mex- 

 ico 



