2i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to England and Russia. The Sicilians thought that he was using it 

 as a dye-stuff, and this, said he, "I let them believe." Nearly two 

 hundred thousand pounds had been shipped by him before the secret 

 of the trade was discovered, since which time the Sicilians have prose- 

 cuted the business on their own account, lie began to turn his atten- 

 tion to the animals of the sea, and here arose his passion for iehthyol- 

 ;v. All the red-shirted Sicilian fishermen brought to him the strange 

 creatures which came in their nets. In 1810 he published two works 

 on the fishes of Sicily, and for our first knowledge of very many of 

 the Mediterranean lishes we are indebted to these Sicilian papers of 

 Rafinesque. 



It is unfortunately true, however, that very little real <rain to sci- 

 ence has come through this knowledge. Rafinesque's descriptions in 

 these works are so brief, so hastv, and so often drawn from memory, 

 that later naturalists have been put to great trouble in trying to make 

 them out. A peculiar, restless, impatient enthusiasm is characteristic 

 of all his writings, the ardor of the explorer without the patience of 

 the investigator.* 



In Sicily, Rafinesque was visited by the English ornithologist. 

 William Swainson. Swainson seems to have been a great admirer of 

 "the eccentric naturalist,"' and of him Rafinesque says: "Swainson 

 often went with me to the mountains. He carried a butterfly-net to 

 catch insects with, and was taken for a crazv man or a wizard. As he 

 hardly spoke Italian, I had once to save him from being stoned out of a 

 field, where he was thought to seek a treasure buried by the Greeks. " 

 Rafinesque now invented a new way of distilling brandy. He es- 

 tablished a brandy-distillery, where, said he, "I made a very good 

 brandy, equal to any made in Spain, without ever tasting a drop of it, 

 since I hate all strong liquors. This prevented me from relishing this 

 new employment, and so I gave it up after a time." 



Finally, disgust with the Sicilians, and fear of the French wars, 

 caused Rafinesque, who was, as he says. u a peaceful man,'' to look 

 a^ain toward the United States. In 1815 he sailed again for Amer- 

 ica, with all his worldly goods, his reams of unpublished manuscripts, 

 his bushels of shells, and a multitude of drawings of objects in natural 

 historv. According to his own account, the extent of his collections 

 at that time was enormous, and from the great number of scattered 

 treatises on all manner of subjects which he published in later years, 

 whenever he could get them printed, it is fair to suppose that his 

 pile of manuscripts was equally great. A considerable number of his 

 note-books, and of papers for which, fortunately for scientific nomen- 

 clature, he failed to find a publisher, are now preserved in the United 

 States National Museum. These manuscripts are remarkable for two 



* Dr. Elliott Coues has wittily suggested that as the words M grotesque" " pictaKftpe,' 1 



and the like, are used to designate certain literary styles, the adjective " rafiTiesquc " 

 may be similarly employed for work like that of the author now under consideration. 



