AN ECCENTRIC NATURALIST. 157 



with, and was taken for a crazy man or a wizard. 

 As he hardly spoke Italian, I had once to save 

 him from being stoned out of a field, where he was 

 thought to seek a treasure buried by the Greeks." 

 Rafinesque now invented a new way of distilling 

 brandy. He established a brandy-distillery, where, 

 said he, " I made a very good brandy, equal to 

 any made in Spain, without ever tasting a drop of 

 it, since I hate all strong liquors. This prevented 

 me from relishing this new employment, and so I 

 gave it up after a time." 



Finally, disgust with the Sicilians and fear of 

 the French wars caused Rafinesque, who was, as 

 he says, " a peaceful man," to look again toward 

 the United States. In 1815 he sailed again for 

 America, with all his worldly goods, including his 

 reams of unpublished manuscripts, his bushels of 

 shells, and a multitude of drawings of objects in 

 natural history. According to his own account, 

 the extent of his collections at that time was enor- 

 mous, and from the great number of scattered 

 treatises on all manner of subjects which he pub- 

 lished in later years, whenever he could get them 

 printed, it is fair to suppose that his pile of manu- 

 scripts was equally great. A considerable number 

 of his note-books, and of papers for which, fortu- 

 nately for scientific nomenclature, he failed to find 

 a publisher, are now preserved in the United States 

 National Museum. These manuscripts are remark- 

 able for two things, the beauty of the quaint 

 French penmanship, and the badness of the ac- 

 companying drawings. His numerous note-books, 

 written in French, represent each the observations 



