296 BULLETIN OP THE BUREAU OP FISHERIES. 



in the college and stored in the garret, and the room which he had formerly occupied 

 turned over to another professor. This was an indignity which our sensitive naturalist 

 could not endure, and he at once left Lexington, as he says, "with anathemas on the 

 university and curses on the president, both of which were speedily fulfilled, for the 

 university building burned down within six months and the president died within a 

 year." 



His stay at Lexington was long enough, however, to enable him to collect, study, 

 and describe many of the animals and plants of the region. His first paper on the 

 fishes, containing descriptions of 26 new species from the Ohio, appeared in 1818 in 

 the American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review. This was followed in the same 

 year by a second paper in the same magazine, in which he listed 22 species from the 

 Ohio, and that by a third paper describing three new genera and species of fishes, which 

 appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (vol. i, 

 1818). Then followed another short article in the American Monthly Magazine and 

 Critical Review for November, 1818. Next came a short paper in the Journal de 

 Physique for June, 181 9, in which 9 species were described as new. Then followed a 

 series of articles in the Western Review and Miscellaneous Magazine from December, 

 1 81 9, to November, 1820. 



During the period of publication of these magazine articles Rafinesque had the 

 matter made up in octavo forms and reprinted from the same type, the pagination, 

 however, differing slightly." This reprint waS' issued by Rafinesque in 1 820 under the 

 title "Ichthyologia Ohiensis." Practically all the matter* contained in the "Ichthyo- 

 logia" appeared first in the magazine and the new species really date from it. 



All of the Ichthyologia was therefore written at Lexington, but on his numerous 

 collecting trips Rafinesque doubtless sometimes went far afield. He evidently found 

 the Falls of the Ohio an excellent place to observe and collect fishes, for he records many 

 species from that place. Among the waters he mentions specifically are the Kentucky, 

 Licking, Big Sandy, Green, Cumberland, Tennessee, Little, Salt, and Elkhorn Rivers, 

 Salt Creek, a pond near Lexington, and springs and caves near Lexington. It is prob- 

 able that he collected in all these waters and many others in Kentucky. 



Rafinesque was therefore the first naturalist to study the fishes of Kentucky and 

 Tennessee. Our first knowledge of the ichthyological fauna of that region dates from 

 Rafinesque's arrival at Lexington in 1818, and to the Transylvania University belongs 

 the honor of having had as a member of its faculty the all-round naturalist who was the 

 first to collect and study the fishes beyond the Alleghenies. To that institution must 

 attach also the stigma of having driven from its halls the only man in its faculty whose 

 name has survived to this day. 



The second person to collect any of the fishes of the Teimessee Basin was 

 Charles A. Hentz, of Florence, Ala. Some time prior to July, 1845, Mr. Hentz collected 

 a number of fishes in Alabama waters, chiefly from the Tennessee River and its small 

 tributaries in the vicinity of Florence. These he forwarded, together with drawings 

 which he made of them, to Dr. D. H. Storer, of Boston, who described them at the 

 meetings of the Boston Society of Natural History, July 2 and 16, 1845 (Storer, 1845). 

 The number of species described from the Tennessee was four, of which two are still 

 regarded as good. 



« For these statements I am indebted to Dr. Richard Ellsworth Call's excellent reprint of the Ichthyologia Ohiensis. 

 ^ Only the Supplement, Corrections and Additions, and Index (pp. 85-90) did not appear in the periodical. 



