Botanical Writings of Rafinesque. 231 



tings to be in a great measure disregarded. The botany of the 

 United States offered, at that time, a fine field to a botanist ac- 

 quainted with natural affinities; and Rafinesque was the only 

 person in this country, who had any pretensions to that kind of 

 knowledge. All we can justly say is, that he possessed talents 

 which, properly applied, would have raised him to a high rank in 

 the science, and that he early apprehended the advantages of the 

 natural classification, although he was by no means well grounded 

 in structural and systematic botany. As early as 1814, indeed, he 

 sketched a general classification of organized beings, to which he 

 continued to attach great importance ; but there is nothing new in 

 it except the names, the botanical portion being merely an ana- 

 gram of Jussieu's leading divisions. His fuller developments of 

 this system certainly contain much that is novel, but at the same 

 time very absurd.* 



Rafinesque's botanical writings between 1815 and 1818, (from 

 his return to the United States, until the publication of Nuttall's 

 Genera of North American Plants, ) consist of some reviews of 

 the works of Pursh, Eaton, Bigelow, &;c. (some of which appear- 

 ed early in 1818,) communicated to the American Monthly Mag- 

 azine ; one or two small papers describing plants or animals in 

 the same magazine ; and the Florula Ludovidana,\ upon which 

 we feel compelled to make some animadversions. The history of 

 this singular production is briefly this. 



A Mr. Robin, who traveled in Louisiana soon after the com- 

 mencement of the present century, appended to his book of trav- 

 els X a popular account of the plants he had observed, under the 



* Vide Flora Telluriana, 1836, part 1st, p. 26, et seq. We have not seen the 

 " Analysis of JVature, 1815," from which the " Table of New Natural Families," a 

 curious mass of nonsense, is said to be substantially taken. 



\ Florula Ludoviciana ; or a Flora of the State of Louisiana ; translated, revised, 

 and improved from the French of C. C. Robin. By C. S. Rafinesque, &c. &c. 

 New York, 1817, 12mo. pp. 178, (including the supplement.) — Perhaps we should 

 also include among the published works of this period, a " Florula Missurica, Man- 

 danensisct Orecronensis," as a pamphlet under this name is mentioned in a" Chrono- 

 logical Index of the principal Botanical works and discoveries published by C. S. 

 Rafinesque," (Herbarium Rafinesquianum, second part;) but this index comprises 

 several works which we elsewhere learn have never been published, and we suspect 

 the above mentioned work is in the same condition. 



i Voyages dans Vinterieur de la Louisiane, de la Floride Occidentale, et dans les 

 iles de la Martinique, et de Saint Domingue, pendant les annies 1802 — 1806, &c. 

 &c.— Paris, 1807, 3 vols. 8vo. 



