April 5, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



385 



been the cause of a myriad of perplexities to 

 students of the nomenchiture of plants and 

 animals in Europe as well as in America. 



Born in Constantinople in 1783, his father 

 a French merchant from Marseilles, his 

 motluT a Greek woman of Saxon parentage, 

 Constantino Katines(ine early entered upon 

 the career of a wanderer. The roving 

 habit of mind which soon became a part of 

 his nature led him into a mental vagabond- 

 age that influenced his career even more 

 than the lack of a permanent place of 

 abode. His youth was passed in Turkey, 

 Leghorn, Marseilles, Pisa and Genoa. He 

 had good opportunities for study and read- 

 ing, and before he was twelve had. as he 

 himself records, read the great Universal 

 History and one thousand volumes of books 

 on many pleasing and interesting subjects. 

 He was ravenous for facts, which he gath- 

 ered, classified and wrote down in his note- 

 books. He began to collect fishes and 

 birds, shells and cralis, plants and miner- 

 als, found or made names for them, copied 

 maps from rare works, and made new ones 

 from his own surveys. His ijrecocious mind, 

 unguided and undisciplined, wandered at 

 will over the entire field of books and nature, 

 and l)y the time he reached the age of nine- 

 teen he had formed his own character and 

 equipped himself for the career which lay 

 before him. He became a man of cata- 

 logues, of categories, of classifications. He 

 possessed much native critical acumen, and 

 it is possible, thougli scarcely probable, that 

 as his present biogi-apher suggests, had he 

 during the formative period been firmly 

 guided by some master hand, he might have 

 become one of the world's greatest natural- 

 ists. Lacking such guidance, however, he 

 was by no means fitted to enter upon a sci- 

 entific career in a country like the Vnited 

 States, so when, at the age of twenty, he 

 crossed the Atlantic he brought with him 

 the germs of failure and bitter disappoint- 

 ment. 



From 1802 to 1805 ho lived in Philadel- 

 phia. From 1806 to 1815 he was in Sicily, 

 where he did some of his best work in his 

 ' Index to Sicilian Ichthyology,' and in his 

 often quoted 'Caratteri.' Here he estab- 

 lished his monthly journal, the ' Mirror of 

 the Sciences' (Specchio delle Scienze, etc.), 

 which endured throughout the twelve 

 months of 1814, but ended wdth its second 

 volume. Katinesquo was not only the 

 editor, but almo.st the sole contributor to 

 this journal, in which he printed no less 

 than sixtj'-eight articles upon a great va- 

 rietj' of subjects — upon animals, plants, min- 

 erals, meteorolog}', physics, chemistry, po- 

 litical economy, archeology, history and 

 literature, besides many critical reviews. 

 His fatal tendency to ' scatter ' was already 

 apparent, and in the work which he did 

 for the ' Specchio ' all the weaknesses of 

 his subsequent career were foreshadowed. 

 "While in Sicily, for political reasons, he 

 assumed the surname, Schmaltz, that of his 

 mother's family. 



In 1815 he returned to America, and was 

 shipwi'ecked on the coast of Connecticut, lo.s- 

 ing all his books, manuscripts and collec- 

 tions. For the next three yeare he lived in 

 New York, and duringthis period hecoutinb- 

 uted to the 'American Monthly Magazine ' a 

 number of really brilliant and learned arti- 

 cles. So masterly, indeed, were these that it 

 seemed as if he were likelj' to become one of 

 the leaders in American scientific thought. 

 It seems probable that he was at this time 

 steadied and guided by his friend and pa- 

 tron. Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, whom 

 he gi-eatly respected and admired ; at all 

 events, when he left Xew York, signs of de- 

 terioration appeared in his methods. In 

 1818 he crossed the Alleghanies, and in the 

 following year became a professor in the 

 Transylvania University, at Lexington, Ky. 



There he remained for seven yeai-s, sadly 

 ill at ease among the old-school college pro- 

 fessors who composed the faculty, yet, fi-oni 



