AUDUBON AND RAFINESQUE 289 



pute and thought to be an antidote, which in the form 

 of syrup was long the bane of childhood ; this and other 

 medicinal drugs he exported to the European and 

 American markets in such quantities that before the 

 secret of his trade became known to the jealous Sicil- 

 ians, he had reaped from it, in conjunction with his 

 other enterprises, a small fortune. During the ten years 

 that were spent in Sicily we find him the manager of a 

 successful whisky distillery, the chancellor or secretary 

 of the American Consulate at Palermo, editor, writer, 

 and correspondent of learned men in Europe, as well as 

 traveler and explorer in every part of the island, which 

 he proposed to monograph with all of its contents. At 

 Palermo Rafinesque met the English naturalist, 

 William Swainson, his lifelong correspondent; together 

 they tramped over the island and together they worked 

 for a number of years on the fishes of the western coast. 3 

 Swainson, who became the friend of Audubon, was one 

 of the few who later defended Rafinesque. 



Rafinesque espoused a Sicilian woman of the Cath- 

 olic faith, and had by her two children, of whom a 

 daughter lived to maturity; this experience seems to 

 have embittered him against the sex, for no other 

 woman excepting his mother, to whom his Life of 

 Travels was dedicated, was ever mentioned in his writ- 

 ings, and this one was disinherited in his extraordinary 

 will. Through fear of being drafted into the French 

 wars, he assumed for a time his mother's family name of 

 Schmaltz, and finally left Sicily in disgust; taking with 

 him his fortune and "fifty boxes of personal goods," 



3 "At Palermo," said Swainson, "I had the pleasure of meeting . . . 

 Rafinesque Schmaltz, whose first name is familiar to most zoologists. In 

 the society of such congenial minds, I passed many happy hours, and 

 made many delightful excursions ... by the inducement of the latter, I 

 was led to investigate the ichthyology of the western coast." (See 

 Bibliography, No. 170.) 



