RAFINESQUE. 213 



visiting ports of Asia and Africa on their way to Marseilles. As a 

 result of this trip, we have the discovery, afterward duly announced 

 by him to the world, that "infants are not subject to sea-sickness." 



At Marseilles his future career was determined for him ; or, in his 

 own language : " It was among the flowers and fruits of that delight- 

 ful region that I first began to enjoy life, and I became a botanist. 

 Afterward, the first prize I received in school was a book of animals, 

 and I am become a zoologist and a naturalist. My early voyage made 

 me a traveler. Thus, some accidents or early events have an influ- 

 ence on our fate through life, or unfold our inclinations." * 



Rafinesque now read books of travel, those of Captain Cook, Le 

 Vaillant, and Pallas especially, and his soul was fired with the desire 

 " to be a great traveler like them. . . . And I became such," he adds 

 shortly. At the age of eleven he had begun an herbarium, and had 

 learned to read the Latin in which scientific books of the last century 

 were written. " I never was in a regular college," he says, " nor lost 

 my time on dead languages, but I spent it in reading alone, and by 

 reading: ten times more than is read in the schools. I have undertaken 

 to read the Latin and Greek, as well as the Hebrew, Sanskrit, Chinese, 

 and fifty other languages, as I felt the need or inclination to study 

 them." 



At the age of twelve he published his first scientific paper, "Notes 

 on the Apennines," as seen from the back of a mule on a journey from 

 Leghorn to Genoa. Rafinesque was now old enough to choose his 

 calling in life, and he decided to become a merchant, for, said he, 

 " commerce and travel are linked." At this time came the first out- 

 breaks of the French Revolution, and the peasants of Provence began 

 to dream of " castles on fire and castles combustible," so Rafinesque's 

 prudent father sent his money out of France and his two sons to 

 America. 



In Philadelphia Constantine Rafinesque became a merchant's clerk, 

 and his spare time was devoted to the study of botany. He tried also 

 to study the birds, but he says, " The first bird I shot was a poor chick- 

 adee, whose death appeared a cruelty, and I never became much of 

 a hunter." During his vacations Rafinesque traveled on foot over 

 parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia. He visited President Jefferson, 

 who, he tells us, asked him to call again. In 1805, receiving an offer 

 of business in Sicily, Rafinesque returned to Europe. He spent ten 

 years in Sicily, the land, as he sums it up, " of fruitful soil, delightful 

 climate, excellent productions, perfidious men, and deceitful women." 

 Here in Sicily he discovered the medicinal squill, which, aided by 

 the equally medicinal paregoric, was once the chief delight of child- 

 hood. He commenced gathering this in large quantities for shipment 



* This and most of the other rerbal quotations in this paper are taken from an " Au- 

 tobiography of Rafinesque," of which a copy exists in the Library of Congress. A few 

 quotations have been somewhat abridged. 



