CONSTANTINE SAMUEL RAFINESQUE. 



1783-1840. 



IT is now more than seventy years since the most learned 

 of our early naturalists, and the most persistent of travellers, 

 crossed the Falls of the Ohio and stood on Indiana soil. He 

 came on foot, with a notebook in one hand and a hickory 

 stick in the other, and his capacious pockets were full of wild 

 flowers, shells, and toads. He wore "a long, loose coat of 

 yellow nankeen, stained yellower by the clay of the roads, 

 and variegated by the juices of plants." In all respects of 

 dress, manners, and appearance he would be described by the 

 modern name of "tramp." Nevertheless, no more remarkable 

 figure has ever appeared in the annals of America or in the 

 annals of science. To the writer it has always possessed a 

 peculiar interest ; and so, for a few moments, I wish to call up 

 before you the figure of Rafinesque, with his yellow nankeen 

 coat, " his sharp, tanned face, and his bundle of plants, under 

 which a peddler would groan," before it recedes into oblivion. 



Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was born in Constantinople 

 on the 22d of October, in the year 1783. His father was a 

 French merchant from Marseilles, doing business in Constan- 

 tinople, and his mother was a German woman, born in Greece, 

 of the family name of Schmaltz. Rafinesque himself, son of 3 

 Franco-Turkish father and a Graeco-German mother, was an 

 American. Before he was a year old his lifelong travels be- 

 gan, his parents visiting ports of Asia and Africa on their way 

 to Marseilles. As a result of this trip we have the discovery, 

 afterward characteristically announced by him to the world, 

 that " infants are not subject to seasickness." At Marseilles 

 his future career was determined for him ; or in his own lan- 

 guage : " It was among the flowers and fruits of that delight 

 ful region that I first began to enjoy life, and I became a 

 botanist. Afterward the first prize I received in school was a 



