194 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



except as he earned it, he had gathered shells and plants and 

 fishes on every shore from the Hellespont to the Wabash. 



Concerning one element of Rafinesque's character I am 

 able to find no record. If he ever loved man or woman, except 

 as a possible patron and therefore aid to his schemes of travel, 

 he himself gives no record of it. He speaks kindly of Audu- 

 bon ; but Audubon had furnished him with specimens and 

 paintings of flowers and fishes. He speaks generously of Clif- 

 ford, at Lexington ; but Clifford had given him an asylum 

 when he was turned out of the Transylvania University. No 

 woman is mentioned in his Autobiography except his mother 

 and sister, and these but briefly. His own travels, discoveries, 

 and publications filled his whole mind and soul. Were it not 

 for his will, recently discovered and published by Thomas Mee- 

 han, nothing would have been known of his family or children. 

 From this will we learn that his son, Charles Linnaeus Rafinesque, 

 died in 1815. His wife, in the same year, married a comedian, 

 who squandered his property, and who was supported by the 

 earnings of the daughter, Emily Rafinesque, who was a singer 

 in the Palermo theatre. 



In his will he says, " I leave my immortal soul to the Crea- 

 tor of the Universe, the Supreme Ruler of millions of worlds 

 soaring through space, to be sent to whatever world he may 

 deem fit, according to his wise laws." His body he left to be 

 burned, not to contaminate the earth. " My ashes, if they can 

 be collected," he says, I wish deposited in an urn to be kept 

 with my collections." 



His property, consisting of inventions and specimens, was 

 to be divided between his sister, his daughter, and a school 

 for orphan girls on the plan of Girard College. 



These plans were not carried out, for his sister died before 

 him ; his daughter seems to have entered no claim ; the inven- 

 tory of the sales of his herbarium and books as waste paper, 

 the sale by auction of his black bottles, boxes, and demi- 

 johns, clothing, gold medal, and all, shows that after all was 

 paid and the executor and cataloguer had received their per- 

 centage, Rafinesque was still indebted to the world in the sum 

 of thirteen dollars and forty-three cents. 



Rafinesque died in Philadelphia, in 1840, at the age of fifty- 

 six. He had lived obscurely in miserable lodgings; for his 

 dried plants, and his books, published at his own expense, 



