62 The Life and Writings of 



of plants, hung loosely about him like a sack. A waistcoat of the 

 same, with enormous pockets, and buttoned up to the chin, reached 

 below over a pair of tight pantaloons, the lower part of which were 

 buttoned down to the ancles. His beard was as long as I have known 

 my own to be during some of my perigrinations, and his lank black 

 hair hung loosely over his shoulders. His forehead was so broad 

 and prominent that any tyro in phrenology would instantly have 

 pronounced it the residence of a mind of strong power. His words 

 impressed an assurance of rigid truth, and as he directed the conver 

 sation to the study of the natural sciences, I listened to him with as 

 much delight as Telemachus could have listened to Mentor.&quot; 



In regarding this description it should be remembered 

 that Rafinesque had reached Henderson after a long and 

 varied journey down the Ohio. The &quot;ark&quot;, in which 

 he last had voyaged, had not the means of polite toilet 

 making; soiled clothing and unkempt beard, in a river 

 village of Kentucky, -in 1818, should have excited neither 

 comment nor wonder. 



A delightful and authentic account of Rafinesque, 

 not as a rambling collector merely, but as a college pro 

 fessor, has been furnished me by one whose mother 

 knew Rafinesque.* The account is given exactly as it 

 came to the writer. Says this lady: 



&quot; There are few persons now living who remember Professor 

 Rafinesque. My mother, then a girl of ten or twelve years of age, 

 recalls him distinctly, and describes him, as did all I have ever 

 heard speak of him, as a most eccentric person ; his extreme absent- 



* Miss Johanna Peter, of Lexington, in litt. 



