212 TEE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. 



ilization, has certainly not proved correct in this case, where we see a 

 large body of wandering hunters converted within three years into a 

 community of industrious and successful farmers. If it be said that 

 the Blackfeet are, to some extent, an exceptional people, we are led to 

 inquire into the origin of their superiority ; and we can find no other 

 cause than the fact that they are evidently a people of mixed race. 

 As the Chilians, who are of mingled Spanish and Araucanian origin, 

 are taking the lead among; the nations of South America as the Fee- 

 jeeans, who are of mixed Polynesian and Alelanesian race, are fore- 

 most in mental vigor among the islanders of the South Pacific so it 

 would seem that the Blackfeet may owe their unusual capacity for 

 improvement to a like cause. Instead of holding the melancholy be- 

 lief which was common a few years ago but which science is now 

 repudiating that Mature is opposed to a mingling of the human races, 

 we may find in such evidences reason to believe that Nature is prepar- 

 ing to produce, by a commixture of the most opposite races, the most 

 progressive, and possibly the predominant, race of the future. 







RAFINESQUE.* 



By Peofessob DAVID STARE JORDAN. 



IT is now nearly seventy years since the first student of our fishes 

 crossed the Falls of the Ohio and stood on Indiana soil. He came 

 on foot, with a note-book in one hand and a hickory stick in the other, 

 and his capacious pockets were full of wild flowers, shells, and toads. 

 His mantle (since fallen upon me) was " a long, loose coat of yellow 

 nankeen, stained yellower by the clay of the roads, and variegated by 

 the juices of plants." In short, in all respects of dress, manners, and 

 appearance, he would be described by the modern name of " tramp." 



Nevertheless, no more remarkable figure has ever appeared in the 

 annals of science or in the annals of Indiana. To me it has always 

 possessed a peculiar interest, and so, for a few moments, I wish to call 

 up before you the figure of Rafinesque, with his yellow nankeen coat, 

 "his sharp, tanned face, and his bundle of plants, under which a ped- 

 dler would groan," before it wholly recedes into the shadows of ob- 

 livion. 



Coxstaxtixe Samuel Rafinesque was born in Constantinople, in 

 the year 1784. His father was a French merchant from Marseilles 

 doing business in Constantinople, and his mother was a German girl 

 born in Greece, of the family name of Schmaltz. Rafinesque himself, 

 son of a Franco-Turkish father and a Grseco-German mother, was an 

 American. 



Before he was a year old his life-long travels began, his parents 

 * Read before the Indiana Academy of Sciences, December 30, 1885. 



