BOOK REVIEW 151 
T. J. Fitzpatrick of Graceland College. It is by far the most 
scholarly and withal the most valuable biography of this greatest 
of early American naturalists that has yet appeared. Born in 
1783, died in 1840, the life of Rafinesque stretched over not sixty 
years of time, while his work in America extended over but a 
quarter of a century. And yet perhaps no other naturalist by the 
labors of so limited a period of time, had contributed so largely 
to the development of American science. The reviewer’s interest 
in Rafinesque began through the study of the freshwater mollusks 
of America, a subject to which Rafinesque made substantial 
contributions.* 
The book before us is divided into four parts: CONSTANTINE 
SAMUEL RAFINESQUE—A SKETCH, pages 11-62; A BIBLIOGRAPHY 
oF C. S. RAFINESQUE, pages 65-219; a BIBLIOTHECA RAFINES- 
QUIANA, pages 223-239; and a list of PORTRAITS OF RAFINESQUE, 
pages 240-241. ‘The biographical part of the volume presents 
in a lucid and intensely interesting style the principal events in 
the life of the great naturalist. Frequent quotations and references, 
sometimes extended, from Rafinesque’s Life of Travels and from 
the works of his contemporaries and successors add greatly to 
the value of the work. In summing up the scientific attainments of 
the man, the fact is not lost sight of that in his well defined con- 
ceptions of the evolution of species and genera of plants by the 
variation of previously existing species (published in 1836) he 
antedated Darwin. ‘‘He had some idea of the germ theory of 
disease. He was a pioneer teacher of modern languages and a 
pioneer object teacher. He was an earnest advocate of the natural 
classification in natural sciences while all his contemporaries 
held to the old Linnaean system. He was also the inventor of the 
coupon system.”’ 
In his interpretation of Rafinesque’s character, Professor 
Fitzpatrick is no less happy. There is shown the intense devotion 
of the man to the sacred cause of Science, ever-present hope which 
bore him through calamities such as have brought many a worthy 
man to an untimely death. Rafinesque, surrounded by a country 
then unknown botanically and zoologically, furiously collected, 
* His genera of mollusks as well as of other animals are being 
largely recognized upon anatomical grounds. See Ortmann, A. E., Mem. 
Carnegie Mus., IV: 335 et seq. (1911). 
