The Life and Writings of 



SCIENTIFIC WORK IN LEXINGTON. 



The student of American science will find most of 

 interest in that portion of Rafinesque s scientific work 

 which was accomplished during his residence in Lex 

 ington. In some respects this period of activity was 

 marked by certain features which were identical with 

 those that had determined his Sicilian work. Rafin- 

 esque was the first naturalist to investigate at all fully 

 the natural history of the Ohio Valley. He found an 

 exhaustless and virgin field. A wealth of life, of every 

 sort, was in constant notice in field, in wood, in stream. 

 The larger and most common food fishes alone were 

 known, and these were, for the greater part, without 

 scientific name. Only an occasional mollusk, which had 

 found its way to the cabinets of Europe from the hands 

 of the earlier French residents along the valley, or the 

 few forms which Say had discovered, were known to 

 science. The birds and larger mammals had been made 

 known, but in the fields where Rafinesque had worked 

 longest and best there was a wealth of new and unde- 

 scribed forms. The temptation to publish, while yet the 

 nondescripts found had been but too carelessly studied, 

 was so great that a flood of scientific papers proceeded 



