90 PENNELL: ‘“‘ UNRECORDED’’ GENERA OF RAFINESQUE 
them, and contain descriptions which are still practically unknown. 
During these years, as claimed by Rafinesque, a number of pam- 
phlets were ‘“‘published,”” but whether certain at Lexington, 
Kentucky, if actually issued, have survived in even a single copy 
is doubtful. It would have been more logical to have commenced 
a search for the unrecorded genera of Rafinesque with these 
earlier works, but the difficulty of the task has made me postpone 
such a paper. 
In 1836 commenced the great period of Rafinesque’s production. 
Then in a series of projects, each curtailed in execution, he tried 
to place before an unresponsive world his views. Many thought 
him ‘‘crazy,’’ but who to-day can read such expressions as those 
presented in the letter to Dr. Torrey preserved in the Herbarium 
Rafinesquianum (p. 11-12) or the expositions in the introductions 
to the New Flora of America and the Flora Telluriana, and not 
consider that here was one of the truly striking forerunners of the 
Evolutionary Movement? His New Flora of North America and 
Flora Telluriana, his greatest works, are well indexed by the Kew 
compilers, so that later scientists have little excuse for the neglect 
with which these are treated. But the work which succeeded 
these, upon which he was writing at the time of his death, and 
which, while pretending to be but a catalog of specimens for sale, 
is actually a study abounding with generic and specific descriptions, 
the Autikon Botanikon, is never cited in the Kew Index. The 
total disregard given it by its contemporaries is well illustrated 
by the fact that in his obituary account of Rafinesque in the 
American Journal of Science and Arts (40: 221-241. 1841). 
Professor Asa Gray seems not to have been aware of its existence. 
Posterity is better able to do justice to Rafinesque than were 
those of his own time, for now we have the sum of his works before 
us, and the science of the present day enables us to be certain of 
the identity of much that was sketchily or partially described 
therein. By any code of nomenclature his names must be ac- 
counted for, and until those conversant with our eastern flora 
patiently analyze the hundreds of descriptions he has left, there 
will always be the possible threat of changes in our current specific 
or generic names. The day is over-due for such an analysis and 
the writer would tell any doubter that, from his own experience 
