146 THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 



University at Lexington, Ky. During his term he explored 

 nearly all the accessible portions of Kentucky and many 

 places in Tennessee. As a teacher he was very absent- 

 minded and the butt of many jokes perpetrated by the 

 students. He seemed to shun society, wore ill-fitting clothes, 

 and paid little attention to his personal appearance. 



In 1825 he returned to Philadelphia and made col- 

 lecting trips in nearly all of the middle Atlantic states, also 

 studying the mountain flora of the northern Appalachians. 

 His closing years were passed in the most abject poverty, 

 without friends. He lived in a garret in a house on the 

 south side of Race (Vine ?) Street, near Fourth or Fifth, 

 peculiar on account of the entrance with high steps,* sur- 

 rounded by his books, minerals, plants, and other scientific 

 collections. Here he died in 1840, and now lies in an 

 obscure grave in Ronaldson's cemetery, at the corner of 

 Kinth and Catharine Streets. 



He left a characteristic will, in which he complains 

 bitterly of what he thought to be the ill-treatment given 

 him by American scientists.f His personal effects consisted 

 of eight dray-loads of books and natural history specimens, 

 most of which had been lost or destroyed. A few specimens 

 found their way into the University of Pennsylvania, I 

 others are in the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences. 



Most of his botanical writings are scattered in news- 

 paper and magazine articles, though he published several 

 more pretentious works, among them being a flora of 

 Louisiana, based entirely on the reports of two non-scientific 



* The Gardeners' Monthly (Meehan), X, p. 253 (1868). 



t See, for account of will, Garden and Forest, IV, p. 146. 



X Mr. Thomas Meehan tells me that the herbarium of Rafinesque came Into 

 the possession of Mr. Isaac Burk, who presented it to the University of Pennsylvania, 

 where it ought to he found. Search, however, has so far not revealed it. 



