CONSTANTINE SAMUEL RAFINESQUE. igi 



pupil of Linnaeus, was giving botanical lectures there. He 

 sent the plant to his master, who named it Kuhnia. Rafi- 

 nesque made this comment : " Kuhn was but a poor botanist, 

 and hardly deserved to have so fine a plant named for him. 

 He did not find the plant, but only took it to Linnaeus, who was 

 flattered because his students gave the first botanical lectures 

 in America; but Kuhn has written nothing." 



Thus it came about that the name and work of Rafinesque 

 fell into utter neglect. His writings, scattered here and there 

 in small pamphlets, cheap editions published at his own ex- 

 pense, had been sold as paper-rags, or used to kindle fires for 

 those to whom they were sent, and late authors could not find 

 them. His Ichthyologia Ohiensis, once sold for a dollar, is now 

 quoted at fifty dollars, and although it has been my fortune to 

 be reviewer and re-editor of this work and to show its claims 

 for a place in modern science, I have seen but two copies of it. 

 The restoration of Rafinesque to his proper place in ichthy- 

 ology is a thankless but necessary piece of work which some 

 fourteen years ago fell to my lot. It has been the fortune of 

 Prof. E. L. Greene, of the University of California, to fix Rafi- 

 nesque's place in American botany. In the absence of means 

 to form a just opinion of his work, it became the habit to pass 

 him by with a sneer, as the " inspired idiot, . . . whose fertile 

 imagination has peopled the waters of the Ohio." Until lately, 

 only Prof. Agassiz * has said a word in mitigation of the harsh 

 verdict passed on Rafinesque by his fellow-workers and their 

 immediate successors. Agassiz says, very justly : 



" I am satisfied that Rafinesque was a better man than he 

 appeared. His misfortune was his prurient desire for novelties, 

 and his rashness in publishing them. . . . Tracing his course 

 as a naturalist during his residence in this country, it is plain 

 that he alarmed those with whom he had intercourse by his 

 innovations, and that they preferred to lean upon the authority 

 of the great naturalist of the age (Cuvier), who, however, knew 

 little of the special history of the country, rather than to trust 

 a somewhat hasty man who was living among them, and who 



* So early as 1844 Prof. Agassiz wrote to Charles Lucien Bonaparte: "I 

 think that there is a justice due Rafinesque. However poor his descriptions, 

 he first recognised the necessity of multiplying genera in ichthyology, and this 

 at a time when the thing was far more difficult than now." 



