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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 14. 



the showing even of his own complaints, 

 treated with singular indulgence by them, 

 and allowed to devote the most of his time 

 to his excursions and to his writing. While 

 here he printed nearly one hundred papers, 

 chiefly descriptions of new plants and 

 animals. From 1825 to 1840 his life was 

 so irregular and his wanderings so extensive 

 that his biographer has made no attempt to 

 follow its course. Philadelphia was his 

 home, when he had one, but he was a soured 

 and disappointed man. His health was 

 bad, and he could not get any one to print 

 his voluminous writings. He established 

 his 'Atlantic Journal,' which soon failed. 

 He published various works by subscription, 

 and also added to his income by the sale of 

 ' Pulmel,' a medicine for the cure of con- 

 sumption, concerning which he wrote a 

 book. In his later years he established in 

 Philadelphia his ' Divitial Institution and 

 Six Per Cent. Savings Bank,' which seems 

 to have had some degree of success. He 

 died in 1840, in poverty and almost friend- 

 less, and is buried in an unmarked grave. 



His career is described well and in sym- 

 pathetic mood by Professor Call, who sums 

 up the story of his last years in these words: 

 " The experiences through which he had 

 passed, which involved some of the saddest 

 that come to men, had so broken him that 

 there is little question that he was not of 

 sound mind during these latest years. He 

 was not, however, the irresponsible madman 

 some would have us believe ; rather, his 

 was monomania and took the direction of 

 descriptions of new forms of plant and ani- 

 mal life. But more than this, his defect 

 was that peculiar form of monomania which 

 believed only in himself ; which gave his 

 own work a value which does not always 

 attach to it ; which made him neglect the 

 work of others, or, if it were noticed, im- 

 pelled him to caustic and unwise criticism." 



This judicious estimate, which is intend- 

 ed by Professor Call to apply onlj^ to his 



later years, I should be disposed with 

 some slight reserves, to accept as a fair 

 summary of his entire life-work, for all of 

 the faults of his latest works were, as I 

 have already suggested, foreshadowed in~ 

 his Sicilian writings of 1814. The sym- 

 pathy which I once felt for Rafinesque has 

 almost vanished with the reading of the 

 whole story of his life, for the man, as shown 

 bj^ his own private papers, appears to have 

 been singularly unsjinpathetic and unlov- 

 able, enveloped in a mantle of self-esteem 

 and interested in natural objects solely be- 

 cause he found in them something to name 

 and to classify. In all his writings there ap- 

 pears scarceljr a gleam of love or enthusiasm 

 for nature, and he speaks of his fellow-men 

 only in words of criticism or malediction. 

 It would doubtless have been much better 

 if he had never touched pen to paper. The 

 fact that he had a keen eje and a remark- 

 able power of diagnosis, and that he had 

 learned the methods of sj'Stematic descrip- 

 tion, made his activitj^ all the more perni- 

 cious, since regard for painstaking accuracj' 

 was as foreign to him as love of nature. 



The canons of nomenclature which now 

 prevail among American naturalists force 

 them to take cognizance of all his descrip- 

 tions and to use his names, whenever by any 

 possibility his meaning can be determined. 

 In many instances I have known him to be 

 given the benefit of a doubt. So the unwel- 

 come name of Eafinesque is constantly 

 obtruding itself in almost every branch of 

 zoology and botanj', and it is likely to re- 

 main for a long time an obstacle in the way 

 of securing the recognition of American 

 nomenclature in Europe. He stands never- 

 theless as an important figure in early 

 American biological literatiire, and whether 

 we like him or not he cannot be ignored. 

 It is fortunate, then, that all relating to his 

 work has at last been brought together in so 

 convenient a form. 



The minute and scholarlj^ bibUography, 



