!84 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



up, " of fruitful soil, delightful climate, excellent productions, 

 perfidious men, and deceitful women." His will, published 

 fifty years after his death, gives a key to this statement. The 

 deceitful woman was his wife, Josephine Vaccaro, and the per- 

 fidious man, the actor Giovanni Pizzalour, with whom she 

 ran away when Rafinesque left Sicily to resume his American 

 travels. 



It was in Sicily that Rafinesque discovered the medicinal 

 squill, which, aided by the equally medicinal paregoric, was 

 once the great specific for all childish ailments. He com- 

 menced gathering this in large quantities for shipment to Eng- 

 land and Russia. The Sicilians thought that he was using 

 it as a dyestuff; "and this," said he, "I let them believe." 

 Nearly two hundred pounds had been shipped by him before 

 the secret of the trade was discovered, since which time the 

 Sicilians have prosecuted the business on their own account. 

 He began to turn his attention to the animals of the sea, 

 and here arose his passion for ichthyology. The red-shirted 

 Sicilian fishermen used to bring to him the strange creatures 

 which came in their nets. In 1810 he published two works 

 on the fishes of Sicily, and for our knowledge of very many 

 of the Mediterranean fishes we are indebted to these Sicilian 

 papers of Rafinesque. It is unfortunately true, however, that 

 very little of real gain to science has come through this knowl- 

 edge. Rafinesque's descriptions in these works are so brief, 

 so hasty, and so often drawn from memory, that later natural- 

 ists have been put to great trouble in trying to make them out. 

 A peculiar, restless, impatient enthusiasm is characteristic of 

 all his writings the ardour of the explorer without the pa- 

 tience of the investigator.* 



In Sicily, Rafinesque was visited by the English ornitholo- 

 gist William Swainson. Swainson seems to have been a great 

 admirer of " the eccentric naturalist," as he called him. Of 

 him Rafinesque says : " Swainson often went with me to the 

 mountains. He carried a butterfly net to catch insects with, 

 and was taken for a crazy man or a wizard. As he hardly 



* Dr. Elliott Coues has wittily suggested that as the words " grotesque," 

 " picturesque," and the like are used to designate literary styles, the adjective 

 " rafinesque " may be similarly employed for work like that of the author now 

 under consideration. 



