2. “a = > . _= 
Se : 
: Bolanssdd Weitings ep Rafinesqu. = =§ BL 
tings to be in a great measure disregarded. 'The botany of the 
United States offered, at that time, a fine field to a botanist ac- 
quainted with natural affinities; and Rafinesque was the only 
person in this country, who had any pretensions to that kind of 
knowledge. All we justly say is, that he possessed talents + 
which, properly applied, would have raised him to a high rank in 
the science, and that he’early apprehended the advantages of the 
natural classification, although he was by no means well grounded ® 
in structural and systematic botany. As early as 1814, indeed, he — 
sketched a general classification of organized beings, to which he * 
continued to attach great importance ; but there is nothing new in 
it except the names, the botanical portion being merely an ana- 
gram of Jussieu’s leading divisions. His fuller developments of 
this system certainly contain much that is novel, but at the same 
time very absurd.* 
Rafinesque’s botanical writings between 1815 and 1818, (from, 
his return to the United States, until the publication of Nuttall’s 
Genera of North American Plants,) consist of some reviews of = 
the works of Pursh, Eaton, Bigelow, &c. (some of which appear- 
ed early in 1818,) communicated to the American Monthly Mag- at 
azine ; one or two small papers describing plants or animals in 
the same magazine; and the Florula Lauloviciana,t upon which 
we feel compelled to make some animadversions. ‘The history of 
this singular production is briefly this. 
A Mr. Robin, who traveled in Louisiana soon after the com- 
mencement of the present century, appended to his book of trav- 
elst a popular account of the plants he had observed, under the 
*Vide Flora Telluriana, 1836, part 1st, p. 26, et seq. We have not seen the 
“ Analysis of Nature, 1815," from which the “ Table of New Natural Families,” a 
“Ook 
Varun 
basins 5 ez x net ss * * - % 
logical Index of the principal Botanical works and discoveries published by C. 8. 
several works which we e D P 
the above mentioned work is in the same condition. 
t Voyages dans Uinterieur de la Louisiane, de la Floride Occidentale, et dans les 
iles de la Martinique, et de Saint Domingue, pendant les années 1802—1806, &c. 
&c.—Paris, 1807, 3 vols. 8vo. 
