RAFINESQUE NEITHER KNAVE NOB FOOL. 741 



■what I can learn of Eafinesque, I am satisfied that be was a better man than he 

 appeared. His misfortune was his prurient desire for novelties and his rashness in 

 publishing them, and yet both in Enrope and America he has anticipated most of his 

 contemporaries in the discovery of new genera and species in those departments of 

 science which he has cultivated most perserveringly, and it isbut justice to restore them 

 to him, whenever it can be done." (Am. Journ. Sc Arts, 1854, p 354.) 



Without further discussion of this subject, which the writer has else- 

 where treated iu full (Review of Rafinesque's memoirs on North Ameri- 

 can Pishes, Bull., ix, U. S. Nat. Mas., 1877), I may say that Rafinesque's 

 work as a whole id bad enough, and bad in a peculiarly, original, and 

 exasperating way, but that it is much better than some of its critics 

 have considered it, and that the trouble it has occasioned in nomencla- 

 ture is due to a large extent to causes not inherent in the character of 

 the work. A certain amount of conservative odium always attaches to 

 a writer who attempts to form natural genera out of time-honored arti- 

 ficial combinations. 



I now turn with pleasure to the writings of one, who, though perhaps, 

 not so good an ichthyologist as his predecessor, Rafinesque, was a much 

 more satisfactory writer on Fishes. 



The earliest paper of Dr. Jared Potter Kirtland on the Fishes of Ohio, 

 to be found in his "Report on the Zoology of Ohio, in the second annual 

 report of the Geological Survey of this State, by W. W. Mather, in 1838." 



This paper consists of a catalogue of 72 species, with notes on their 

 habits, distribution, and value as food. 



Later, Dr. Kirtland undertook a much more important work entitled, 

 "Descriptions of the Fishes of Lake Erie, the Ohio River and their tribu- 

 taries." 



This was published as a serial in the Boston Journal of Natural His- 

 tory, vols, iii, iv, and v, (1840 to 1846). 



In this work, 66 species are described belonging to 32 genera. Each 

 species is accompanied by a figure drawn by Dr. Kirtland himself 

 These figures are very unequal, some of them, especially of the later ones, 

 are very good, while others are scarcely recognizable. It should be re- 

 membered that scientific draughtsmen were more diflicult to obtain in 

 Ohio then than now, and that the author of the paper drew the fishes 

 himself because he could find no one else competent to do it 



The faults of this paper are exactly the reverse of those of the Ichthy- 

 ologia Ohiensis. They are principally two fold : (a) in an undue con- 

 servatism, whereby several really distinct species (as Pomoxys annularis 

 and Pomoxys nigromaculaius) are confounded, and numerous smaller min- 

 nows and darters are treated as the young of their larger relatives, and 

 (6) in an undue reliance on the opinion of certain other authors, whose 



