1 68 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



travel. Two lines of doggerel French were his 

 motto : 



"Un voyageur des le berceau, 

 Je le serai jusqu'au tombeau " 



"A traveller from the cradle, 

 I 'm a traveller to the tomb." 



Long before the invention of railroads and 

 steamboats he had travelled over most of south- 

 ern Europe and eastern North America. With- 

 out money 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 charac- 

 ter I am able to find no record. If he ever loved 

 any man or woman, except as a possible patron 

 and therefore aid to his schemes of travel, he him- 

 self gives no record of it. He speaks kindly of 

 Audubon; but Audubon had furnished him with 

 specimens and paintings of flowers and fishes. 

 He speaks generously of Clifford, at Lexington ; 

 but Clifford had given him an asylum when he 

 was turned out of 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. 



Rafinesque died in Philadelphia, in 1840, at the 

 age of fifty-six. He had been living obscurely in 

 miserable lodgings; for his dried plants, and his 

 books published at his own expense, brought him 

 but a scanty income. His scientific reputation 

 had not reached his fellow-lodgers, and his land- 

 lord thought him " a crazy herb-doctor." He died 



