AN ECCENTRIC NATURALIST. 163 



jected by him, as well as " steam ploughs," " aquatic 

 railroads," fire-proof houses, and other contrivances 

 which he was unable to perfect. He took much 

 delight in the study of the customs and languages 

 of the Indians. In so doing, if the stories are 

 true, he became, in a way, associated with the ori- 

 gin of Mormonism ; for it is said that his theory 

 that the Indians came from Asia by way of Siberia, 

 and were perhaps the descendants of the ten lost 

 tribes of Israel, gave the first suggestion to Solo- 

 mon Spaulding for his book of the prophet Mor- 

 mon. In any case, whether this be true or not, 

 it is certain that Rafinesque is still cited as high 

 authority by the Latter-Day Saints when the gen- 

 uineness of the book of Mormon is questioned. 



Rafinesque now returned to Philadelphia, and 

 published " The Atlantic Journal and Friend of 

 Knowledge," " Annals of Nature," and other seri- 

 als, of which he was editor, publisher, and usually 

 sole contributor. After a time he became sole sub- 

 scriber, also, a condition of affairs which greatly 

 exasperated him against the Americans and their 

 want of appreciation of science. He published 

 several historical treatises, and contemplated a 

 " Complete History of the Globe," with all its con- 

 tents. An elaborate poem of his, dreary enough, 

 is entitled " The World ; or, Instability." He made 

 many enemies among the American botanists of 

 his time by his overbearing ways, his scorn of 

 their customs and traditions, and especially by his 

 advocacy of crude and undigested though neces- 

 sary, reforms, so that at last most of them decided 

 to ignore his very existence. In those days, in 



