DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 3 



is gradually assuming in the history of other departments of 

 natural science, we would be almost pardoned in keeping 

 silence as to his ornithological work. However, Philadelphia 

 ornithologists, more than any others, should feel an interest in 

 him, for the three earliest titles in his bibliography, strangely 

 enough, not only relate to birds, but were written in Philadel- 

 phia, and the first two of these described four new species of 

 birds from Java, which he found in Peale's Philadelphia 

 Museum. These were communicated to his friend Daudin and 

 published by the latter in the Bulletin of the Philomathic So- 

 ciety of Paris in 1802. The first article describes a new wood- 

 pecker and a partridge, omitting, however, to give them scien- 

 tific names.' The second article relates to a new swallow and 

 a new warbler, naming them respectively ' ' Hirudo longipennis ' * 

 and ^^ Sylvia cuneata.''^ * Rafinesque's descriptions of these, his 

 maiden efforts in this line, were quite full and painstaking. If 

 he had followed these as his models in after life, there would have 

 been another story to tell, but he soon after lapsed into the perni- 

 cious brevity and looseness of description, which were not only 

 in large measure the chief causes of his own scientific troubles, 

 but also of those of his successors who have endeavored to 

 identify his discoveries and credit him with the real results. 



Returning from this digression, we find him living in Sicily 

 for ten years, actively engaged in commercial and natural his- 

 tory pursuits. Having meanwhile married and been deserted 

 by his wife and two children, and having also published several 

 works relating to the Natural History of Sicily, also a ' ' Nature 

 System" after the plan of the new French School of Science, 

 whose leaders, Lamarck, Lac^p^de and others, he says, he took 

 for guides, Rafinesque sailed again for America. On the 2d of 

 November, 1815, after a most tempestuous voyage, he was 

 wrecked on the Race Rocks, off Long Island, escaping to land 

 only with his life and ' ' a few scattered funds, ' ' his entire bag- 



* These were supplied later by Rafinesque in his " Precis des d^couvertes 

 Somiol." Palerme, 1814, p. 2 of the printed covers, viz., Turnix javanica 

 and Dinopium {Picoides) erythronotus. 



2 Bulletin des Sci. par la Soc. Philomathique, III, Nos. 67, 68, 1802, pp. 

 146. 153. 



