Yet this hog was probably not within fifty generations of the European stock. I am well informed of another which weighed 1,100 lbs. gross. Asses have been still more neglected than any other domestic animal in America. They are neither fed or housed in the most rigorous season of the year. Yet they are larger than those measured by Mons. D'Aubenton,[30] of 3 feet 7¼ inches, 3 feet 4 inches, and 3 feet 2½ inches, the latter weighing only 215.8 lbs. These sizes, I suppose, have been produced by the same negligence in Europe, which has produced a like diminution here. Where care has been taken of them on that side of the water, they have been raised to a size bordering on that of the horse; not by the _heat_ and _dryness_ of the climate, but by good food and shelter. Goats have been also much neglected in America. Yet they are very prolific here, bearing twice or three times a year, and from one to five kids at a birth. Mons. de Buffon has been sensible of a difference in this circumstance in favor of America.[31] But what are their greatest weights, I cannot say. A large sheep here weighs 100 lbs. I observe Mons. D'Aubenton calls a ram of 62 lbs. one of the middle size.[32] But to say what are the extremes of growth in these and the other domestic animals of America, would require information of which no one individual is possessed. The weights actually known and stated in the third table preceding will suffice to show, that we may conclude on probable grounds, that, with equal food and care, the climate of America will preserve the races of domestic animals as large as the European stock from which they are derived; and, consequently, that the third member of Mons. de Buffon's assertion that the domestic animals are subject to degeneration from the climate of America, is as probably wrong as the first and second were certainly so. That the last part of it is erroneous, which affirms that the species of American quadrupeds are comparatively few, is evident from the tables taken together. By these it appears that there are an hundred species aboriginal in America. Mons. de Buffon supposes about double that number existing on the whole earth.[33] Of these Europe, Asia, and Africa, furnish suppose one hundred and twenty-six; that is, the twenty-six common to Europe and America, and about one hundred which are not in America at all. The American species, then, are to those of the rest of the earth, as one hundred to one hundred and twenty-six, or four to five. But the residue of the earth being double the extent of America, the exact proportion would have been but as four to eight. Hitherto I have considered this hypothesis as applied to brute animals only, and not in its extension to the man of America, whether aboriginal or transplanted. It is the opinion of Mons. de Buffon that the former furnishes no exception to it.[34]