76 The Life and Writings of 



specimens. The markets and the fishermen furnished 

 his materials. He borrowed, from the work of others, 

 information and facts as suited his purposes; he was not 

 always as careful to give full credit, as is the modern 

 writer, to the sources of his information. This sub 

 jected him to severe criticism; yet, be it remembered, 

 little had previously been learned concerning his field 

 of work. Cuvier, a great naturalist, but one who was 

 entitled also to the appellation of u closet naturalist&quot; 

 more justly, perhaps, than any other man of his day, 

 finds fault with Rafinesque for divers reasons. The 

 criticism which he offered is the first severe one that 

 had occurred in contemporaneous literature. He said 

 of Rafinesque s &quot;Indice d 1 Ittiologia Siciliana &quot;/ 



&quot; He has besides entered in his catalogue, without examination, 

 all the species given by L,acepede and Linnaeus as belonging to the 

 Mediterranean, which has caused him to reckon several which are 

 purely imaginary, and this extends even to his genera : thus his 

 Aodon, taken from L,acepede, is the Rate cephahptere ; his Macro- 

 rhapus, taken from the same source, is the Centriscus. He has greatly 

 multiplied the genera, and sometimes on slight grounds; so that, 

 without reckoning those which are not inhabitants of the Mediter 

 ranean, there are 139; and yet, notwithstanding his readiness to 

 make these divisions, he has not done so in circumstances in which 

 it would be imperatively commanded by the laws of classification. 

 He leaves, for instance, the anchovy in the herring genus, and the 

 plaice in that of the sole; while of the single L,innean genus Squalus 

 he has made sixteen.&quot; &quot; These two works are, nevertheless,&quot; con- 



