‘ 
a, 
Botanical Writings of Rafinesque. 233 
a 
for upon the whole, we place quite as much confidence in his de- 
terminations as in Rafinesque’s corrections. But we do say, that 
there is no reason for supposing that Robin has been more suc- 
cessful in the instances which Rafinesque has adopted, and upon 
which his new species of existing genera rest; and we confi- 
dently state, that it is impossible, with all the knowledge we now 
possess of the botany of that region, to recognize one species out 
of fifty, with tolerable satisfaction, from Robin’s descriptions, 
which must nevertheless have been drawn from the more com- 
mon plants of Louisiania; and we never heard of the re-discov- 
ery of any one of these new genera and species, although many 
intelligent botanists and diligent collectors reside in, or have since 
visited that region. The Flore Louisiane, in the state Robin 
left it, could do no harm, and whatever information it contained 
was quite as available as at present. As improved by a botanist 
who had never been within a thousand miles of Louisiana, and 
who at that period, could scarcely have seen a dozen Louisianian 
plants, the only result has been to burthen our botany with a list 
of nearly two hundred species semper incognite. 'There can, we 
think, be but one opinion as to the consideration which is due to 
these new genera and species: they must be regarded as ficti- 
tious, and unworthy of the slightest notice.* 
As the works of Nuttall, Elliott, Barton, and others appeared, 
. Rafinesque published critical notices of them in the American 
Monthly Magazine. He soon after collected and condensed these 
ctiticisms, and republished them, with some additions, in the 
Journal de Physique for 1819, with the title of Remarques cri- 
tiques et synonomiques sur les Ouvrages de MM. Pursh, Nuttall, 
Elliott, etc. In these many suggestions of more or less impor- 
* We are constrained, by the length to which this article has extended, to omit 
4 Series of extracts we had prepared in fuller confirmation of our remarks.—We 
are bound to mention the excuse Rafinesque offers for this production. In the 
Herbarium Rafinesquianum, p. 17, he says: “I have been reproached wrongly to 
have published my *Florula Louisinin out of Robin, without spocumens; ; but Grono- 
vius did so- with Clayton, and bak ry otk with Loureiro. Robin’s herbarium may 
© seen in France as well as Michaux’s,” efc.—The case of Loureiro’s Flora Co- 
chin-Chinensis may perhaps be dorheth ing to the purpose; but every botanist — 
sis sg may easily know, that the assertion is altogether untrue as regards the 
Flora irginica of Gronovius, who had the specimens as well as the notes of Clay- 
ton in his possession. We find no evidence that Robin brought back a single dri- 
oo to France : he professes to have drawn his descriptions from the living 
plan 
