Constantine Samuel Rafinesque. 15 



It is materially unfortunate, to our mind, that Raf- 

 inesque does not, in his &quot;Life of Travels&quot;, enter some 

 what more into detail respecting his home life in Sicily. 

 But one will search in vain for a single word on these 

 topics. There seems to have been abundant reason for 

 not mentioning these matters, for Rafinesque married, 

 in 1809, a Sicilian woman by the name of Josephine 

 Vaccaro, a woman who does not appear to have been 

 suited to the kind of life the naturalist had marked 

 out for himself. It is more than probable that this 

 marriage was never consummated in legal form. In his 

 will,* from which alone this information is obtained, he 

 says: &quot;While residing in Sicily I deemed myself law 

 fully married . . . although the decree of the Council 

 of Trent forbade our regular marriage.&quot; The two infer 

 ences which may safely be drawn from this statement are, 

 first, that the Sicilian whom he espoused was a Roman 

 Catholic in religious faith, and, second, that legal or 

 religious rites were never solemnized. In 1811 a daugh 

 ter, Emily, was born to the couple, and in 1814 a son, 

 Charles Linnaeus. The boy died the following year, 

 1815. Neither child is mentioned by Rafinesque in all 

 his writings ; in his will alone we find the first intima 

 tion of paternity and of parental solicitude. Of the 



* Vide Appendix, where this will is given in full. 



