144 THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 



CHARLES J. WISTER. 



Charles J. Wister was born in 1782, dying July 23rd, 

 1865. Elected a member of the American Philosophical 

 Society in 1811, he took a deep interest in its welfare.* He 

 was a friend and contemporary of Thomas Nuttall, with 

 whom he botanized. His son, W. Wynne Wister, was 

 taken by him to hear Mr. Nuttall's lectures in the German- 

 town Academy, where he received an inspiration for the 

 science which lasted a lifetime. 



CONSTANTINE SAMUEL RAFINESQUE [SCHMALTZ]. f 



Perhaps no American botanist has been so misrepre- 

 sented and misunderstood as Constantine Samuel Rafinesque. 

 Vain, ambitious and eccentric to the last degree, he was the 

 first teacher of science west of the Appalachians, and one of the 

 pioneer naturalists of the United States. Though a volumi- 

 nous writer in French, Italian and English, on all kinds of 

 subjects, including religion, ethnology, sociology and natural 

 science, his publications were, in the main, quite limited in 

 the number of copies, and are now mostly rare. In the 

 bibliographical list given in the sumptuous quarto of Dr. 

 Call, nearly 450 titles are quoted of articles, pamphlets and 

 books written by Rafinesque, of which 141 are on botanical 

 subjects. Most of them are rubbish, pure and simple, and 

 yet it must be said that American botany owes him a great 

 deal more than modern systematists generally admit. 



/ 



* For a short obituary notice, see The Gardener's Monthly (Meehan), YII, 

 p. 271. 



^ Asa Gray Bulletin, Vol. IV, No. 1., p. 6. Most of the material for this 

 article, by G. H. Hicks, was obtained from the " TheLife and Writings of Rafinesque." 

 No. 10, Filson Club Publications. Richard Ellsworth Call, Louisville, Ky., 1895." 



Botanical Gazette VIII : 177,191. Garden and Forest, IV: 146. 



Popular Science Monthly, 1886, p. 212. Science, N. S.,l: 384. 



I 



