Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey listener discretion advised. Hey,
Speaker 1: this is Danish Swartz, the host of Noble Blood. If
Speaker 1: you want to support the show, we are on Patreon
Speaker 1: at patreon dot com slash Noble Blood Tales. I'm also
Speaker 1: on Instagram with a Noble Blood account, where I sometimes
Speaker 1: post random memes and things that I make or find.
Speaker 1: That's also Noble Blood Tales. But as always, the best
Speaker 1: support for the show is just that you keep listening, unless,
Speaker 1: of course, you want to pre order my book Immortality,
Speaker 1: a Love Story, in which case that is the best
Speaker 1: support you could possibly be doing. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening, and let's dive in. The year was
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty four and Thomas Jefferson had a problem. He
Speaker 1: was a Francophile. He was just about to set out
Speaker 1: for France as an ambassador from the new country of America.
Speaker 1: But at this particular moment in time, the French were
Speaker 1: making him a little annoyed. Well, one Frenchman in particular,
Speaker 1: George Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Baifont, arguably the most
Speaker 1: famous natural historian in the world. At this time, Buffon
Speaker 1: was the author of an internationally best selling thirty six
Speaker 1: volume book called the hispan Necral, or Natural History, in
Speaker 1: which he gave meticulous evidence for the theory of quote degeneracy.
Speaker 1: This was a popular European theory at the time, which
Speaker 1: claimed that all flora and fauna were weaker and smaller
Speaker 1: in the New World as compared to the Old World,
Speaker 1: i e. Europe. The plants and animals of America were
Speaker 1: shriveled little things compared to the plants and animals in Europe.
Speaker 1: So the theory went, the birds of America could not
Speaker 1: croak out a note compared to the marvelous European songbirds,
Speaker 1: the dogs of America could only whimper compared to the
Speaker 1: great barking hounds of the continent. And the people well,
Speaker 1: According to this theory, the native Americans fared no better
Speaker 1: than the native fauna and flora. Jefferson ruminated on Buffon's
Speaker 1: work with increasing outrage. The chapter on quadrupeds for legged
Speaker 1: beasts was especially egregious. How could befall claim that the
Speaker 1: American land mammal was inferior, that man had never even
Speaker 1: left Europe? Jefferson envisioned his beloved home state, Virginia, which
Speaker 1: was no longer a colony, finally part of a new
Speaker 1: independent nation. When he looked out at the grounds of
Speaker 1: his estate at Monticello, he saw rolling, fertile fields tended
Speaker 1: to buy people he enslaved, but lands that were capable
Speaker 1: of growing tobacco, wheat, and a whole host of crops.
Speaker 1: He saw the mountain on whose peak he had built
Speaker 1: his plantation. He remembered the lush, verdant Piedmont forests of
Speaker 1: his youth, the smell of autumn crisp through the trees,
Speaker 1: the hoofprints of deer just visible on the forest floor.
Speaker 1: He recalled the spry doze and magnificent stags leaping away
Speaker 1: in the thicket. If anything, Jefferson thought the plants and
Speaker 1: animals and people were bigger in America, better in America.
Speaker 1: He had written as much painstakingly in his just published
Speaker 1: book Notes on the State of Virginia. He believed the
Speaker 1: giant mastodon was still roaming the country somewhere, the most sublime,
Speaker 1: the most colossal quadruped of all. Besides, hadn't Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: already shown the French that Americans were taller on his
Speaker 1: trip to the continent. Hadn't Alexander Hamilton refuted the degeneracy
Speaker 1: concept in his Federalist papers. Hadn't Jefferson and James Madison
Speaker 1: corresponded on the matter sufficient to finally set it to rest.
Speaker 1: How dare the French not? We can't No, The degeneracy
Speaker 1: libel could not stand. Jefferson needed to do something. He
Speaker 1: picked up his quill to write John Sullivan, Governor of
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, another part of America dnse with forest and
Speaker 1: the Great White Mountains. Jefferson needed to bring something to
Speaker 1: the continent that would change the Frenchman's mind for good.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just acting for his own sake. He was
Speaker 1: acting on behalf of the reputation of the new world,
Speaker 1: of the brand new United States of America, so young
Speaker 1: that its articles of Confederation were still being tested in practice.
Speaker 1: For the good of the Union, Thomas Jefferson, founding father,
Speaker 1: former governor of Virginia, future president, needed to ship something
Speaker 1: enormous across the Atlantic Ocean. As the decade of the
Speaker 1: seventeen eighties neared its close. A dog wouldn't do, nor
Speaker 1: a squirrel, nor a deer. He needed to show Comte
Speaker 1: de Baifant the biggest four legged American animal that he
Speaker 1: could readily find. He dipped his quill into a pot
Speaker 1: of ink and leaned over his parchment. What he needed,
Speaker 1: he wrote to New Hampshire, was a mood. I'm Dani
Speaker 1: Schwartz and this is noble blood. Adult men comparing bodies,
Speaker 1: fighting over whose is bigger, and getting worked up over
Speaker 1: contests of size. If the fight over the theory of
Speaker 1: degeneracy sounds a bit like an eighteenth century men's locker
Speaker 1: room to you, well it basically was. But who were
Speaker 1: the men doing the measurements in the metaphorical locker room?
Speaker 1: The comb tip of fone was born George Louis le
Speaker 1: Cleric in seventeen o seven. He came of age in
Speaker 1: France after the death of Louis as the Age of
Speaker 1: Enlightenment was beginning to flourish after an evidently miserable childhood,
Speaker 1: before made a name for himself at the Royal Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences by writing papers on the mathematics of probability,
Speaker 1: especially as it applied to gambling. For most of his
Speaker 1: early life, there's little evidence of any actual interest in
Speaker 1: nature or cataloging of natural history. The closest thing to
Speaker 1: anthropology we might see was this sweet little note from
Speaker 1: his travels as a young man. Quote women are quite beautiful,
Speaker 1: and except for the old ones, I don't remember having
Speaker 1: seen any that were ugly unquote A little anthropologist in training.
Speaker 1: But all that changed when the French Navy needed a
Speaker 1: place to research would for their ships, they chose the
Speaker 1: forests around Beffon's estate, and it was then that Buffon
Speaker 1: turned his attention to the natural world. For the next decade,
Speaker 1: he devoted himself with singular zeal, to cataloging, recording, and
Speaker 1: measuring the exact features of every species he could find.
Speaker 1: He wanted to write no less than quote the exact
Speaker 1: description and the true history of each thing end quote
Speaker 1: on the planet, and in seventeen forty nine, the first
Speaker 1: volume of his natural history was published. It was a sensation,
Speaker 1: a genuine eighteenth century best seller, one of the first
Speaker 1: ever popular science books. It's sold out in six weeks
Speaker 1: and was translated into English and reviewed by newspapers all
Speaker 1: over the American colonies. Smart trendy readers throughout Europe and
Speaker 1: America were devouring it and its details about the theory
Speaker 1: of degeneracy in the New World, essentially, wrote Buffon, nature
Speaker 1: in America is functioning quote upon a smaller scale. Buffone
Speaker 1: was not the first European thinker to propose the idea
Speaker 1: of degeneracy in America, but he was the most respected,
Speaker 1: the most widely read. He provided the most evidence and
Speaker 1: the clearest reason. Because the climate in America is colder
Speaker 1: and wetter, life grows weaker and diminished. His arguments extended
Speaker 1: to the people of the New World to His statements
Speaker 1: about Native American populations were especially intensely callous. He called
Speaker 1: indigenous Americans quote a kind of weak automaton. Nature treated
Speaker 1: them rather like a stepmother than a parent, by refusing
Speaker 1: them the invigorating sentiment of love and the strong desire
Speaker 1: of multiplying their species unquote. For the record, Befall's own
Speaker 1: relationship with parental love was that he had not attended
Speaker 1: his own father's second wedding after his mother's death. He
Speaker 1: had sued his father for his inheritance and described his
Speaker 1: feelings as that of quote the discontent of a l
Speaker 1: born son caused by a father who was heartless unquote.
Speaker 1: So if a lack of parental love renders a person
Speaker 1: in firm. Well, that doesn't speak very well of him.
Speaker 1: In all his comparison of species, Buffon never left Europe
Speaker 1: and rarely went out into nature to collect any information himself.
Speaker 1: That was actually common practice for natural historians of the time.
Speaker 1: Instead of actually collecting data themselves, they relied on the
Speaker 1: relay testimonies of others and on cabinets of curiosities collections
Speaker 1: of natural and interesting objects. One of the collections Befone
Speaker 1: relied on was actually the King's Buffon was like the geographer,
Speaker 1: invented two centuries later in fiction by another French author
Speaker 1: and Twine de Saint Experi in The Little Prince. In
Speaker 1: that book, the geographer character says he quote doesn't go
Speaker 1: out to scribe cities, rivers, mountains, seas, oceans and deserts.
Speaker 1: A geographer is too important to go wandering about. He
Speaker 1: never leaves his study, but he received the explorers there.
Speaker 1: He questions them, and he writes down what they remember
Speaker 1: end quote. Thomas Jefferson, for his part, had spent his
Speaker 1: childhood in the woods of Virginia. Born in seventeen forty three,
Speaker 1: he was thirty six years Buffons Jr. Like Buffon, he
Speaker 1: studied law Unlike Buffon, he had an evident interest in nature, botany,
Speaker 1: and scientific observation from the time he was very young.
Speaker 1: Jefferson is obviously known to American history as a complicated figure.
Speaker 1: He's the author of the Declaration of Independence, an eloquent
Speaker 1: plea for man's fundamental freedom and equality, and yet he
Speaker 1: owned a slave plantation, And as he was contemplating helping
Speaker 1: to build a new independent American nation, he was deeply
Speaker 1: affronted by Buffon's claims of American degeneracy. He wasn't the
Speaker 1: only one. Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton's basically half
Speaker 1: the guys in the musical Hamilton's We're defending America against
Speaker 1: degeneracy theory at one time or another. Lee Allen de Gatkin,
Speaker 1: whose research I am indebted to for this episode, rightly
Speaker 1: note that these guys were bothering to think about some
Speaker 1: Frenchman's theory quote in the midst of issues such as
Speaker 1: the proposition to hold a constitutional convention, whether paper money
Speaker 1: should be adopted, and what to do about an empty treasury.
Speaker 1: You know, just those little things. But that's to say
Speaker 1: this project of defending American bigness and heartiness had the
Speaker 1: valance of nationalism during a time when nationalism really mattered.
Speaker 1: The Republic was newly one from the British and it
Speaker 1: needed to define its national character on the world stage
Speaker 1: as one of strength. Of all of the founders, it
Speaker 1: was Jefferson who worked most passionately to refute buffonse theory.
Speaker 1: In his book Notes on the State of Virginia, published
Speaker 1: in seventeen eighty five, Jefferson name check Buffon and his theory,
Speaker 1: and then spent page after page defending America against it.
Speaker 1: Jefferson included tables on quote a comparative view of the
Speaker 1: quadrupeds of Europe and of America, which compare by weight
Speaker 1: everything from the mammoth to the wolf, to the links,
Speaker 1: to the otter to the shrew mouse. Jefferson catalogs the
Speaker 1: number of species found only in Europe versus the number
Speaker 1: of species found only in America. Rather hilariously, he includes
Speaker 1: a whole page in which the American side of the
Speaker 1: table is filled in and the European side is just blank.
Speaker 1: He obsesses for a while about his belief that the mammoth, which,
Speaker 1: remember Jefferson is positive, is still around somewhere. Should quote
Speaker 1: have stifled in its birth, the opinion of a writer
Speaker 1: most learned too of all others in the science of
Speaker 1: animal history unquote, that is, it should have stifled the
Speaker 1: opinion of Bouffon. Jefferson was also passionate to the point
Speaker 1: of being over the top in his defense of Native
Speaker 1: Americans against the claim of degeneracy. At one point, he
Speaker 1: says that no orator in all of Europe, not even
Speaker 1: Cicero ever gave a speech better than a Mingo chief
Speaker 1: named Logan. But as you might expect when it comes
Speaker 1: to Jefferson and race, his views were complicated. In the
Speaker 1: same book, he makes sure to note that different races
Speaker 1: have different physical and mental abilities. It's just not in
Speaker 1: Jefferson's opinion, because of where they were born. In the end,
Speaker 1: Jefferson wasn't satisfied with his buttle to Befall in his book.
Speaker 1: He needed something physical, something bigger than words on a page.
Speaker 1: He needed to get through to Befall. What he needed
Speaker 1: was the biggest animal that could be procured, the beast
Speaker 1: that would so impress Befall that the Frenchman would be
Speaker 1: forced to publicly change his mind. That is why Jefferson
Speaker 1: needed a moose if you were a correspondent of the
Speaker 1: eminent Thomas Jefferson in the mid seventeen eighties, you were
Speaker 1: almost certainly someone important George Washington or John Adams. Perhaps
Speaker 1: in the seventeen eighties you might have been worried about
Speaker 1: economic disputes with neighboring states. You probably would have worn
Speaker 1: a double breasted waistcoat and skin tight riding breeches, and
Speaker 1: a tall hat, maybe with a buckle for flair. And
Speaker 1: you might have one day received from your eminent correspondent
Speaker 1: a sixteen questioned survey on the habits and measurements of
Speaker 1: the American moose. Do they make a loud rattling sound
Speaker 1: when they run? Jefferson asked, what is their food? What
Speaker 1: is the height? Its length from ear to ear, its
Speaker 1: circumference were largest. You can almost imagine the Facebook post,
Speaker 1: Hey friends, anybody know anything about a moose? One friend did,
Speaker 1: John Sullivan, Governor of New Hampshire. The two men continued
Speaker 1: to correspond on and off about the possibility of procuring
Speaker 1: a moose, a correspondence that continued when Jefferson shipped off
Speaker 1: to Paris as Ambassador to France. In Paris, Jefferson left
Speaker 1: a dinner with Baffon, with the distinct impression that showing
Speaker 1: Befall a giant moose would change the Frenchman's mind about
Speaker 1: American degeneracy once and for all. He wrote more urgently
Speaker 1: to Sullivan in New Hampshire, saying that the quote skin, skeletons,
Speaker 1: and horse unquote of moose would be quote more precious
Speaker 1: than you can imagine unquote. In fact, by this time,
Speaker 1: Buffon had already issued a fifth supplement of his natural
Speaker 1: History that was a gentle walking back. While American degeneracy
Speaker 1: had originally extended to the entire American continent, the fifth
Speaker 1: edition subtly dropped the references to North America. It's not
Speaker 1: clear whether Jefferson saw or registered this change. If he did,
Speaker 1: he surely didn't think it was enough. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: back in New Hampshire, John Sullivan decided to deliver. In
Speaker 1: mid March, very much still winter in New England, he
Speaker 1: dispatched a twenty man team to kill a seven foot
Speaker 1: tall moose Vermont as a favor to Thomas Jefferson. It's
Speaker 1: at this point in the story that it might be
Speaker 1: time to introduce the third player in our metaphorical locker
Speaker 1: room an unwitting player to be sure the moose himself.
Speaker 1: The word moose comes from the Algonquin language. The Algonquin
Speaker 1: root word refers to stripping off, probably of bark, the
Speaker 1: way a moose's antlers might. Elizabeth Bishop's famous poem The
Speaker 1: Moose describes an animal quote that stands there looms rather
Speaker 1: towering high as a church. Unquote. The adult male moose
Speaker 1: averages six ft tall each year in the testosterone surge
Speaker 1: before breeding season. It's antlers grow in a coat of
Speaker 1: velvet and then harden before shedding. And yes, to continue
Speaker 1: our prevailing anatomical metaphor, one wild life biologist for National
Speaker 1: Geographic says, quote, the guy who has the biggest set
Speaker 1: of antlers and can show them off to potential girl
Speaker 1: friends will be the fortunate individual who does the breeding. Unquote.
Speaker 1: Those antlers alone can weigh sixty pounds, and the moose
Speaker 1: can weigh fourteen hundred pounds. That's the sheer size of
Speaker 1: the thing that Sullivan's men spent the next two weeks
Speaker 1: hauling twenty miles through the snow back to New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: Sullivan stepped outside nose reddening in the cold, to find
Speaker 1: not the noble creature that Thomas Jefferson had asked for,
Speaker 1: but a putrefying carcass in very rough shape. Nevertheless, he
Speaker 1: was committed to his task, so the men, wanting arrest
Speaker 1: and a warm hearth at this point, instead set to
Speaker 1: the hard work separating flesh from bone, preserving as much
Speaker 1: of the moose as they could against further degradation, and
Speaker 1: attempting to keep the hoofs and antlers attached. The smell
Speaker 1: of dead moose filled their nostrils as they worked, but
Speaker 1: as they continued, they reached an uneasy conclusion. This moose
Speaker 1: and its antlers would not be making it together across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. Jefferson's moose could only come in pieces. The
Speaker 1: magnificent specimen that Jefferson requested was not to be Like
Speaker 1: a kid. Desperate not to fail the assignment, Sullivan also
Speaker 1: decided to send along a few other antlers he had
Speaker 1: lying around. This was New Hampshire, after all, and he
Speaker 1: instructed Jefferson that he could attach them to the carcass
Speaker 1: at will. By this time, fulfilling Jefferson's obsessive requests for
Speaker 1: a moose had become more trouble than Sullivan had signed
Speaker 1: up for this was a guy who had once charged
Speaker 1: at Hessian's soldiers during the Revolutionary War with a pistol
Speaker 1: in each hand, and now he was stuck borrowing forty
Speaker 1: five pounds sterling from his brother to deal with Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson's moose carcass. He must have been very happy to
Speaker 1: put the moose and the assorted antlers on a ship
Speaker 1: that sets sail from Portsmouth, New Hampshire in early May,
Speaker 1: but the poor moose got left behind on that ship
Speaker 1: for reasons unknown, possibly that chip's captain got a whiff
Speaker 1: of the giant, smelly moose skin and decided he could
Speaker 1: do a transatlantic voyage without it. For five months, the
Speaker 1: carcass sat until finally it caught her ride and arrived
Speaker 1: in Half the Grace France in the final days of September.
Speaker 1: We can only imagine Jefferson's ecstasy at the arrival of
Speaker 1: the ship, and then his disappointment at the sorry state
Speaker 1: of its cargo. Nonetheless, he immediately wrote Buffon on October
Speaker 1: one seven. He told the Frenchman that he had the
Speaker 1: bones and skin of a moose. He did make some apologies.
Speaker 1: He had envisioned that the skin would come stuffed and
Speaker 1: sewn back together like a giant bild the bear. He'd
Speaker 1: imagined something immediately impressive. Instead, Jefferson acknowledged this moose had
Speaker 1: been sent quote with the hair on, but a great
Speaker 1: deal of it has come off, and the rest is
Speaker 1: ready to drop off unquote, more than anything. Jefferson implored
Speaker 1: Buffon's understanding when it came to matters of size. The
Speaker 1: antlers that finally made it across the Atlantic with the
Speaker 1: moose skin and bones were those assorted antlers of other
Speaker 1: species that the governor had included, and Jefferson tried his
Speaker 1: best to justify them, insisting, quote, the horns of the
Speaker 1: elk are remarkably small. I have certainly seen of them
Speaker 1: which would have weighed five or six times as much.
Speaker 1: The horns of the deer which accompany these spoils are
Speaker 1: not of the fifth or sixth part of the weight
Speaker 1: of some that I have seen. I therefore beg of
Speaker 1: you not to consider those now sent as furnishing a
Speaker 1: specimen of their ordinary size unquote shrinkage. You can almost
Speaker 1: hear him saying he signed the letter to Buffon, your
Speaker 1: most obedient and most humble servant, and I will say
Speaker 1: it is hard reading these letters not to see how
Speaker 1: Lin Manuel Miranda made Jefferson the buffoonish frenchman oft in Paris.
Speaker 1: In Hamilton's, of course, it was Buffon who Jefferson was
Speaker 1: hoping to make the buffoon, at least when it came
Speaker 1: to the degeneracy theory. Jefferson viewed Buffon as a true scientist,
Speaker 1: an intelligent man who had made a mistake and would
Speaker 1: surely be swayed by the evidence set before him. Jefferson
Speaker 1: sent the letter off with giddy anticipation. Thomas Jefferson had
Speaker 1: gotten his moose, and soon he would get Baffall. To
Speaker 1: recount when the moose carcass landed in France, Jefferson was
Speaker 1: a relatively young man of forty four, but Befall, at
Speaker 1: this point was eighty years old and sick. It was
Speaker 1: his assistant who received the moose. In Jefferson's imagination, the
Speaker 1: assistant would have been dumb struck. Sir. The assistant would
Speaker 1: say to Baffall, you've been all wrong, all wrong. The
Speaker 1: animals in this new world are larger than the old world.
Speaker 1: Baffall would gaze upon the moose bones with shock and awe.
Speaker 1: He would immediately sit up and change course, frantically, writing
Speaker 1: it would be a defining moment in his scientific career.
Speaker 1: But that's not what happened. Buffon may eight indeed have
Speaker 1: seen the moose. Maybe he really did plan, as Jefferson believed,
Speaker 1: he would to officially renounce the theory of degeneracy once
Speaker 1: and for all in his next volume of the Natural History,
Speaker 1: But Buffon died six months later before publishing another word
Speaker 1: on the subject. In Jacques Rogers four hundred plus page
Speaker 1: biography of BeFAN, the incident with Jefferson's moose is mentioned
Speaker 1: in exactly one paragraph, where it gets half a sentence.
Speaker 1: The Natural History remained as it was, with no moose
Speaker 1: related corrections. Jefferson went on to become the third President
Speaker 1: of the United States fourteen years later. He would send
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark to the West with a long list
Speaker 1: of natural measurements for them to obtain. He would collect
Speaker 1: a grand cabinet of curiosities at Mounticello and have a
Speaker 1: hall hung with the head and antlers of a moose,
Speaker 1: a deer, a buffalo, and supposedly a mammoth. He never
Speaker 1: gave up on his quest to prove the massiveness of
Speaker 1: animals in the New World. In se he presented to
Speaker 1: the American Philosophical Society a collection of giant bones from
Speaker 1: a new species he called the Megalonyx, which turned out
Speaker 1: to be the bones of the extinct giant sloth. And
Speaker 1: as to the whole debate over which animal from which
Speaker 1: quote world is bigger and therefore better, I've made allusions
Speaker 1: here to the men's locker room measuring contest character of
Speaker 1: it all. But it was a debate with real consequences,
Speaker 1: not so much the answer to the question of size,
Speaker 1: but the framing of the question itself. The very concept
Speaker 1: that bigger is better Undergird's manifest destiny, the sense of
Speaker 1: largeness that America offered to conquerors, the possibility of more
Speaker 1: when Europe had already been claimed bigger as better undergirds
Speaker 1: the subjugation of women to men over centuries applied to
Speaker 1: Native American populations. It is dehumanization in either direction, the strong,
Speaker 1: noble savage or the weak, degraded man. It's presented today
Speaker 1: in political wars between large and small states in the
Speaker 1: United States, between large and small states of the world.
Speaker 1: But what if, of course, bigger is not necessarily better,
Speaker 1: even if we could prove that life grew bigger in
Speaker 1: some places than others, does a value judgment need to
Speaker 1: be attached? Might Darwin himself, born a decade after the
Speaker 1: Comte de Baifant, argue that smallness can be adaptive, useful
Speaker 1: good at base? The reason why the fight over degenerously
Speaker 1: mattered to these eighteenth century men was there intrinsic feeling
Speaker 1: that bigger is better. So I want to leave you
Speaker 1: and this episode with a thought, what if it's simply not.
Speaker 1: That's the story of Thomas Jefferson and America in a
Speaker 1: battle of size against the Comte de Bifont and Europe.
Speaker 1: But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear
Speaker 1: what happened to Befon's corps. The funeral of the Comte
Speaker 1: de Beifont was a grand affair. This was the author
Speaker 1: of the best selling natural history, The Visionary and Poetic
Speaker 1: Epics of Nature and the First Geological History of the World,
Speaker 1: a book that was read by the likes of Catherine
Speaker 1: the Great. On April eighteenth, seventeen eighty eight, twenty thousand
Speaker 1: mourners watched as fourteen horses carried Buffon's funeral processions down
Speaker 1: the street of San Menard, France, and they listened to
Speaker 1: three dozen choir boys singing songs of mourning. They may
Speaker 1: not have known that the body they were mourning had
Speaker 1: been opened one day earlier after Buffon's death. Buffon himself
Speaker 1: had given the instructions before he died. His chest cavity
Speaker 1: was cut and his heart removed from his body, and
Speaker 1: then given to his friend, Fouget de Saint Fon, a
Speaker 1: geologist and volcanist. Buffon's skull was opened with a saw.
Speaker 1: The instinct for comparative measurement did not abandon those who
Speaker 1: dealt with Buffon's corpse. The brain was recorded as a
Speaker 1: quote slightly larger size than that of ordinary brains unquote.
Speaker 1: So the heartless body of the naturalist was mourned with
Speaker 1: fanfare on the way to its interment in Monbar. It
Speaker 1: did not stay interred during the French Revolution, which began
Speaker 1: just one year after Buffon's death, a revolution that would
Speaker 1: claim the life of his son at the guillotine. Buffon's
Speaker 1: tomb was broken into the lead over the coffin was
Speaker 1: stolen to make bullets, and his body was desecrated. Legend
Speaker 1: has it that only his Sarah bellum was left, and
Speaker 1: that to this very day, allegedly in the base of
Speaker 1: a statue of Buffon commissioned by Louis the sixteenth, housed
Speaker 1: in the Museum of Natural History in Paris, a little
Speaker 1: piece of the naturalist's brain remains. Noble Blood is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Danishwartz. Additional
Speaker 1: writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Miura Hayward,
Speaker 1: Courtney Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The show is produced by
Speaker 1: rema Il Kali, with supervising producer Josh Thaine and executive
Speaker 1: producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.