CASSINIA 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE DELAWARE 

 VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB 



No. XV. PHILADELPHIA, PA. 1911 



Conslantine S. Rafinesque as an Ornithologist 



BY SAMUEL N. RHOADS 



Who was Rafinesque, and what had he to do with ornithol- 

 ogy? These would have been very reasonable queries for a 

 birdman to ask forty years ago of a person presuming to make 

 Rafinesque the subject of a leading article in a Philadelphia 

 bird magazine. 



As to who Rafinesque was, that is a long and curious story 

 of an unique and many-sided naturalist, who spent the greater 

 half of his wandering life in the middle United States. Born 

 near Constantinople in 1783 of Franco-German parents, the 

 subject of our sketch, like many another Old World genius of 

 the period, drifted to Philadelphia about the time he reached 

 early manhood. Landing in the Quaker City, April 18, 1802, 

 and having influential letters to Dr. Rush and other prominent 

 men, he soon became acquainted with the more noted natural- 

 ists of the vicinity, as well as those of New York. Superabund- 

 ant enthusiasm, combined with a very decided mixture of 

 egotism and vanity, which he never attempted to disguise, to- 

 gether with the most radical and remarkably advanced views as 

 to the classification and nomenclature of biology, eventually 



