Mr. Jefferson and the giant moose : natural history in early America / Lee Alan Dugatkin

Object Details

Contents: "Dictatorial powers of the botanical gentlemen of Europe" -- The count's degenerate America -- "Noxious vapors and corrupt juices" -- "Not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting" -- "Geniuses which adorn the present age" -- Enter the moose -- Thirty-seven-pound frogs and Patagonian giants -- Extracting the "tapeworm of Europe" from our brain
Summary: Capturing the essence of the origin and evolution of the so-called "degeneracy debates," over whether the flora and fauna of America (including Native Americans) were naturally weaker and feebler than species elsewhere in the world, this book chronicles Thomas Jefferson's efforts to counter French conceptions of American degeneracy, culminating in his sending of a stuffed moose to Buffon.

Author: Dugatkin, Lee Alan 1962-
Subject: Jefferson, Thomas 1743-1826 Knowledge and learning; Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc comte de 1707-1788 Attitudes

Topic: Degeneration--Environmental aspects--Historiography; Human beings--Effect of environment on; Life sciences--History