I do not mean to deny, that there are varieties in the race of man, diftinguifhed by their powers both of body and mind.
I believe there are, as I fee to be the cafe in the races of other animals. I only mean to fuggeft a doubt, whether the bulk and faculties of animals depend on the fide of the Atlantic on which their food happens to grow, or which furnifties the elements of which they are compounded?
Whether nature has enlifted herfelf as a Cis or Trans-Atlantic partifan? I am in- duced to fufpeft, there has been more eloquence than found reafoning difplayed in fupport of this theory; that it is one of thofe cafes where the judgment has been feduced by a glowing pen: and whilft I render every tribute of honour and ef- teem to the celebrated zoologift, who has added, and is ftill adding, fo many pre- cious things to the treafures of fcience, I muft doubt whether in this mftance he has not cherifhed error alfo, by lending her for a moment his vivid imagination and bewitching language. (4)
So far the Count de BufFon has carried this new theory of the tendency of nature to belittle her productions on this fide the Atlantic. Its application to the race of whites, tranfplanted from Europe, re- mained for the Abbe Raynal. * On doit etre etonne (he fays) que TAmerique n'ait pas encore produit un bon poete, un ha- bile mathematicien, un homme de genie dans un feul art, ou une feule fcience'.
Hift. Philof. p. 92. ed. Maeflricht. 1774- * America has not yet produced one good poet^ When we fhall have exifted as a people as long as the Greeks did before they produced a Homer, the Romans a Virgil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the Englifti a Shakefpeare and Milton,