The human race is an inherently competitive team, and the highest members of society are often the worst criminals. The leaders of the great superpowers compete with the manliest things, after all, it will be admitted that they are not the greatest. So, when Thomas Jefferson was told that some people in the rest of the world thought he was the smallest of them, it certainly hit American pride. And by that, we want to say the size of his wild animals.
See, in the mid-18th century and beyond, the great monarchs of European biology held a misleading belief that the American climate allowed animals and plants to thrive at only a moderate height, much smaller than that found in Europe. This belief was established by the famous French aristocrat and naturalist Georges-Louis Lackler, Compet de Buffon, who kept an eye on the states and thought that something was not right.
At the moment, America has improved over 200 years, perfectly long – in its eyes – to produce great and famous people. Yet, Benjamin Franklin was the only name that became the ear of Europe. Buffon made a theory trying to understand their strange “lack of success” – the environment was much waterlogged. With Europe becoming such an international powerhouse, Buffon came to the conclusion that America was simply the worst version of Europe. Plagued by the smell of wetlands and dense forests, it is certainly impossible that anything of good condition and size could arise from such a situation and so both humans and animals would have to be small.
Thomas Jefferson, a science-loving and proud American, strongly disagreed. He saw that the moose fell on top of the human body and that the cells were much larger than an English stag – these were in no way inferior animals, he thought. Of course, European Europeans will not accept any ‘undeveloped’ American term. Jefferson therefore devised a plan to convince them – if believed; he would bring the animals to them.
