220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nesque "was a better man than he appeared," and while he was un- 

 doubtedly a man of great learning and of greater energy, his work 

 does not deserve a high place in the records of science. And his fail- 

 ure seems due to two influences : first, his lack of attention to details, 

 a defect which has vitiated all of his work ; and, second, his versatility, 

 which led him to attempt work in every field of learning. 



As to this, he says himself : " It is a positive fact that in knowledge 

 I have been a botanist, naturalist, geologist, geographer, historian, 

 poet, philosopher, philologist, economist, philanthropist. By profes- 

 sion a traveler, merchant, manufacturer, brewer, collector, improver, 

 teacher, surveyor, draughtsman, architect, engineer, palmist, author, 

 editor, bookseller, librarian, secretary, and I hardly know what I may 

 not become as yet, since, whenever I apply myself to anything which 

 I like, I never fail to succeed, if depending on myself alone, unless im- 

 peded or prevented by the lack of means, or the hostility of the foes 

 of mankind." 



" The one prudence in life," says Emerson, " is concentration ; the 

 one evil, dissipation." 



But a traveler Rafinesque chiefly considered himself, and to him 

 all his pursuits, scientific, linguistic, historic, were but episodes in a 

 life of travel. Two lines of doggerel French were his motto : 



" Un voyageur des le berceau, 

 Je le serai jusqu 1 au toinbeau." 



"A traveler from the cradle, 

 I'm a traveler to the tomb." 



Long before the invention of railroads and steamboats, he had 

 traveled over most of Southern Europe and Eastern North America. 

 Without money except as he earned it, he had gathered shells and 

 plants and fishes on every shore from the Hellespont to the Wabash. 

 He was the frontiersman of our natural history, the Daniel Boone of 

 American science. 



Concerning one element of Rafinesque's character I am able to 

 find no record. If he ever loved any man or woman, except as a pos- 

 sible patron and therefore aid to his schemes of travel, he himself 

 gives no record of it. He speaks kindly of Audubon, but Audubon 

 had furnished him with specimens and paintings of flowers and fishes. 

 He speaks generously of Clifford, at Lexington, but Clifford had given 

 him an asylum when he was turned out of Transylvania University. 

 No woman is mentioned in his autobiography except his mother and 

 sister, and these but briefly. His own travels, discoveries, and publi- 

 cations, filled his whole mind and soul. 



Rafinesque died in Philadelphia, in 1840, at the age of fifty-six. 

 He had been living obscurely in miserable lodgings in an unfriendly 

 garret, for his dried plants, and his books published at his own expense, 

 brought him but a scanty income. His scientific reputation had not 



