2i 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tributor. After a time he became sole subscriber also, a condition of 

 affairs which greatly exasperated him against the Americans and their 

 want of appreciation of science. He published several historic treatises, 

 and contemplated a " Complete History of the Globe," with all its con- 

 tents. An elaborate poem of his, dreary enough, is entitled "The 

 World, or Instability." He made many enemies among the American 

 botanists of his time by his overbearing ways, his scorn of their cus- 

 toms and traditions, and especially by his advocacy of crude and undi- 

 gested though necessary reforms, so that at last most of them decided 

 to ignore his very existence. In those days, in matters of classification, 

 the rule of Linnaeus was supreme, and any attempt to recast his arti- 

 ficial groupings was looked at as heretical in the extreme. The attempt 

 at a natural classification of plants, which has made the fame of Jus- 

 sieu, had the full sympathy of Rafinesque, but to his American con- 

 temporaries such work could lead only to confusion. Then, again, in 

 some few of its phases, Rafinesque anticipated the modern doctrine of 

 the origin of species. That the related species of such genera as Mosa, 

 Quercus, Trifolium have had a common origin, a view the correctness 

 of which no well-informed botanist of our day can possibly doubt, 

 Rafinesque then maintained against the combined indignation and dis- 

 gust of all his fellow- workers. His writings on these subjects read 

 better to-day than when, forty -five years ago, they were sharply re- 

 viewed by one of our then young and promising botanists, Dr. Asa 

 Gray. 



But the botanists had good reason to complain of the application 

 of his theories of evolution. To Rafinesque, the production of a new 

 species was a rapid process a hundred years was time enough and, 

 when he saw the tendency in diverging varieties toward the formation 

 of new species, he was eager to anticipate Nature (and his fellow-botan- 

 ists as well), and give it a new name. He became a sort of mono- 

 maniac on the subject of new species. He was uncontrolled in this 

 matter by the influence of other writers, that incredulous conservatism 

 as to one another's discoveries which furnishes a salutary balance to 

 enthusiastic workers. Before his death, so much had he seen, and so 

 little had he compared, that he had described certainly twice as many 

 fishes, and probably nearly twice as many plants and shells, also, as 

 really existed in the regions over which he traveled. He once sent for 

 publication a paper describing, in regular natural history style, twelve 

 new species of thunder and lightning which he had observed near the 

 Falls of the Ohio ! 



Then, too, Rafinesque studied in the field, collecting and observing 

 in the summer, comparing and writing in the winter. When one is 

 chasing a frog in a canebrake, or climbing a cliff in search of a rare 

 flower, he can not have a library and a museum at his back. The ex- 

 act work of our modern museums and laboratories was almost un- 

 known in his day. Then, again, he depended too much on his memory 



