7 8 The Life and Writings of 



and this was followed by a pamphlet entitled Indie e d } Ittiologia 

 Sidliana\ The details of the new views of M. Rafinesque, in regard 

 to classification, are too long to be inserted in this volume, but they 

 will be occasionally adverted to. The faults that have been dwelt 

 upon* in these two works are such as all authors, even M. Cuvier 

 himself, is not exempt from ; they seem to us, in short, too trivial 

 for the notice of the historian, and too general to be affixed to any 

 one author in particular. We freely admit that M. Rafinesque (then 

 living, as we were, in a remote part of Europe, cut off, by the late 

 war, from all intercourse with the Continent) was not well informed 

 upon the current and almost daily discoveries going on there ; and 

 that some few of his species, then supposed new, were really not so : 

 but who is exempt from such errors, if errors they are ? or how are 

 such co-incidents to be prevented, when naturalists, in distant 

 places, and unknown to each other, are working at the same time 

 on the same subject? On the other hand, it must not be concealed 

 that M. Rafinesque anticipated, by nearly ten years, a verj^ large 

 proportion of the generic and subgeneric distinctions subsequently 

 taken up in the Regne Animal, in the first edition of which it is 

 clear that its learned author was totally unacquainted with the works 

 above mentioned, or that he was unconsciously repeating, under new 

 names, a considerable number of the genera and subgenera long 

 before established in the volumes of Professor Rafinesque. It would 

 have been well had these unintentional errors been rectified in the 

 second edition, or in the general ichthyological work of MM. Cuvier 

 and Valenciennes ; but they are not so ; and naturalists will judge 

 how far this is consonant with common justice, or with that law 

 of priority which is the only safe-guard to the reputation we all 

 covet. The generic characters of Rafinesque are as simple and 

 intelligible as those of Ljnnseus, and the derivation of their names 

 strictly classical and euphonious. In regard to the majority of 



* Mentioned above in the extract relating to Cuvier s criticisms. [R. E. C.] 



