A CENTURY OF ZOOLOGY IN INDIANA. 193 



of the contrary, I took up the bow of my demolished vioHn, and giving a 

 smart tap to each bat as it came up, we soon has specimens enough." 



Most of the dates I have thus far given are before the beginning of the 

 one hundred years with which we are primarily concerned at this time. 

 I call attention to them simply to remind you that our state was in the 

 original "Buffalo belt," and that our forefathers were quite justified in placing 

 that magnificent animal on the the Great Seal of Indiana. 



Even a cursory examination of the State Seal will enable us to understand 

 why the buffalo became extinct in Indiana. At the rate of speed shown in 

 the Great Seal, if kept up, the buffalo must have reached the plains of Kan- 

 sas within a few hours! 



With the possible exception of a few specimens of birds collected by 

 Audubon and Wilson on Indiana soil, the first naturalist to pay any attention 

 to the Indiana fauna was Rafinesque. This indefatigable student of nature 

 came from Philadelphia to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1818, where, through 

 the good offices of his friend, John D. Clifford, whom he had known in Phila- 

 delphia, he secured the professorship of botany and natural history in Trans- 

 sylvania University, located at Lexington. 



A number of circumstances doubtless contributed to induce Rafinesque 

 to go west. Perhaps the most potent of all was the wanderlust. Early in 

 life he determined to become a great traveler; and in his writings he tells, 

 with evident pleasure, of many of his long journeys and collecting trips. 

 In one place he mentions his "32 years of travels in America." He had no 

 doubt heard of the famous New Harmony community on the Wabash, a society 

 that must have appealed to him strongly. He also had heard of Audubon at 

 Henderson, Kentucky, and longed to visit him, which he did in 1818. Then 

 at Louisville, at the Falls of the Ohio, dwelt Tarascon, a friend of his youth 

 in Marseilles. 



These, and his desire to see new places and new animals and plants, were 

 too strong for him to resist, so, in the summer of 1818, he started out on foot, 

 for the west. Reaching Pittsburgh he continued his journey down the Ohio 

 in an "ark," a sort of flatboat common on the Ohio in those days. Oppor- 

 tunities were afforded for many stops on the way, which Rafinesque 

 fully improved by making short and hurried trips ashore, in which he obtained 

 collections of natural history specimens of many kinds. Perhaps he paid 

 most attention to the fishes and the plants. He doubtless made a number of 

 landings on the Indiana side of the river between Cincinnati and the Falls 

 of the Ohio, and a number of the fishes he later described were obtained or 

 observed in Indiana waters, We can imagine with what child-like delight 

 and enthusiasm our pioneer naturalist viewed this new world, for it was to 

 him. as Professor Call has so well said, "a veritable new world; the plants 

 and animals had never before been either collected or studied. The hand of 

 the husbandman had not yet destroyed much of the primitive forest; untold 

 wealth of natural forms appealed to Rafinesque, the nature-lover, as they have 



