AUDUBON AND RAFINESQUE 295 



affairs in Philadelphia, Rafinesque entered upon his 

 new labors at Lexington in the autumn of 1819. He 

 was probably the first teacher of these subjects west 

 of the Alleghanies, and certainly the first in that section 

 of the country to use the present object method in the 

 elucidation of natural history. The lot of a pioneer in 

 education has never been a sinecure, and the post which 

 Rafinesque then filled was not a "chair" but a hard 

 "settee." In those days the classics were in the saddle 

 and "rode mankind," while the natural sciences, when 

 tolerated at all, were given short shrift; yet this eccen- 

 tric foreigner held his position for seven years and ac- 

 complished an extraordinary amount of work. As 

 usual he spread his energies over the whole field of 

 knowledge, lecturing, writing and publishing on almost 

 every subject, but concentrating upon none. Mean- 

 while, he roamed far and wide and made extensive col- 

 lections. 



While at the Transylvania University Rafinesque 

 seems to have applied for the master of arts' degree, but 

 was at first refused, as he said, "because I had not stud- 

 ied Greek in a college, although I knew more languages 

 than all of the American colleges united, but it was 

 granted at last; but the Doctor of medicine was not 

 granted, because I would not superintend anatomical 

 dissections." 



One of his many projects, as meritorious as it was im- 

 practical, at that time, was a Botanic Garden with a 

 Library and Museum for Lexington, which was then 

 but a small village; though land was actually secured 

 and a start in tree planting begun, the project of course 

 came to nothing and had to be abandoned. Rafinesque 

 also invented, as he believed, the present coupon system 

 of issuing bonds, the "Divitial Invention," as he called 



