Constantine Samuet Rafinesque. 83 



of the Jesuit Fathers, at Palermo. With the design of 

 making it more accessible to others he had the entire 

 work copied &quot;on oil paper at great expeuce&quot;. Some 

 thing like one hundred and twenty of the seven hun 

 dred plates he had engraved; most of them were devoted 

 to the illustration of Sicilian plants. The work was 

 never completed; all that is known of the venture is 

 the statement by Rafinesque, in his &quot;Life of Travels&quot;, 

 that these plates went down in the Race Rock ship 

 wreck off New London. The idea of a complete cop} 

 of this work, made in the manner described, seems to 

 have had its inception in another plan of Rafinesque 

 to monograph the natural history of Sicily entirely and 

 completely. Most of the leisure of the ten years resi 

 dence in the island was devoted to the collection and 

 study of natural objects with the one purpose, ever in 

 mind, of some day completing this self-imposed task. 

 In some certain sense this will account for the wide 

 range over which his studies and writings, at that 

 time, extended. Much of his work finally found its 

 way into print through the medium of various scientific 

 journals, and through the medium of the journal which 

 Rafinesque himself established, and carried to the comple 

 tion of the second volume, the Specchio delle Scienze, etc. 

 Writing on many subjects, and without monographic 



