288 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



first voyage, made with his parents on their return to 

 France, by way of Scutari in Asia, Smyrna, and Malta, 

 led to his first discovery, when he was a year old, for he 

 was able to announce that "infants are not subject to 

 sea-sickness." At eleven he read Latin and collected 

 plants; at thirteen he wrote his first scientific paper, 

 "Notes on the Apennines," which he had seen when 

 traveling from Leghorn to Genoa. His father, who 

 set out for China in 1791, fell in with pirates, but man- 

 aged to reach America; he died of the yellow fever in 

 Philadelphia in 1793. To escape the Reign of Terror in 

 France, Rafinesque's mother fled with her children to 

 Italy, where four years were passed at Leghorn. There 

 Constantine studied with private tutors, but his educa- 

 tion was never formal and he was allowed to follow 

 his omnivorous tastes, reading, as he said, ten times 

 more than was taught in the schools. His writings are 

 mainly in French, Italian, and English, and his facility 

 with languages was no doubt remarkable, even if we 

 discount his egotized estimate of his own attainments: 

 "I have undertaken to read the Latin and Greek, as 

 well as the Hebrew, Sanskrit, Chinese, and fifty other 

 languages, as I felt the need or inclination to study 

 them." 



In 1802 Rafinesque was sent with his brother to 

 America and became a shipper's clerk at Philadelphia, 

 where he spent all of his spare time in the study of 

 nature, plants being his first and greatest love. Here 

 he was befriended by Dr. Benjamin Rush, and during 

 this period he made the acquaintance of many pioneer 

 naturalists in the United States. In 1805 the offer of 

 a lucrative situation in Sicily lured him back to the Old 

 World and to a country already known to him. There 

 he soon discovered the medicinal squill, of ancient re- 



