Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/73

Rh “J'aime autant une personne qui me releve d'une erreur, qu'une autre qui m' apprend une verité, parce qu'en effet une erreur corrigée est une verité.” He seems to have thought the Cabiai he first examined wanted little of its full growth. “Il n'etoit pas encore tout-a-fait adulte.” Yet he weighed but 46½ ℔, and he found afterwards that these animals, when full grown, weigh 100 ℔. He had supposed, from the examination of a jaguar, said to be two years old, which weighed but 16 ℔ 12 oz., that, when he should have acquired his full growth, he would not be larger than a middle-sized dog. But a subsequent account raises his weight to 200 lb. Further information will, doubtless, produce further corrections. The wonder is, not that there is yet something in this great work to correct, but that there is so little. The result of this view then is, that of 26 quadrupeds common to both countries, 7 are said to be larger in America, 7 of equal size, and 12 not sufficiently examined. So that the first table impeaches the first member of the assertion, that of the animals common to both countries, the American are smallest: “Et cela sans aucune exception.” It shews it not just, in all the latitude in which its author has advanced it, and probably not to such a degree as to found a distinction between the two countries.

Proceeding to the second table, which arranges the animals found in one of the two countries only, Mons. de Buffon observes that the tapir, the elephant of America, is but of the size of a small cow. To preserve our comparison, I will add that the wild boar, the elephant of Europe, is little more than half that size. I have made an elk, with round or cylindrical horns, an animal of America, and peculiar to it, because I have seen many of them myself, and more of their horns; and because I can say from the best information, that in Virginia this kind of elk has abounded much, and still exists in smaller numbers; the palmated kind is confined to the more Northern