AUDUBON AND RAFINESQUE _ 287 
continued jumping and running round and round, until 
he was fairly exhausted, when he begged me to procure 
one of the animals for him, as he felt convinced they 
belonged to ‘a new species.’ Although I was convinced 
to the contrary, I took up the bow of my demolished 
Cremona, and administering a sharp tap to each of the 
bats as it came up, soon had specimens enough.” Other 
incidents of this visit, which Audubon said lasted three 
weeks, are fully recorded. The eccentric naturalist 
collected an abundance of plants, shells, bats and fishes. 
One evening he failed to appear, and after a prolonged 
search was nowhere to be found; nor were the Audu- 
bons wholly assured of his safety until some weeks later 
they received a letter with due acknowledgments of their 
hospitality. 
The “M. de T.” of this episode was Constantine 
Samuel Rafinesque, in many respects the most singu- 
lar figure that has ever appeared in the annals of Ameri- 
can science. Although young in years, for Rafinesque 
was then but thirty-five, he was already old in experi- 
ence and that of the bitterest sort; and although already 
known to many in both hemispheres, he had few friends. 
It is certain that neither Audubon nor anyone else in 
that part of Kentucky had ever heard of him before. 
Born in Constantinople, of a father who was a 
French merchant from Marseilles and of a mother with 
a German name who by nativity was Greek, Rafinesque 
had known life in many lands, and was destined, as he 
said, to be a traveler from the cradle to the tomb.” His 
?For the characterization of Rafinesque given in the present chapter I 
am chiefly indebted, aside from his own writings, to his two most sym- 
pathetic biographers, Richard Ellsworth Call and T. J. Fitzpatrick, as well 
as to David Starr Jordan; see Bibliography, Nos. 198, 228, and 183. Fitz- 
patrick gives photographic reproductions from Rafinesque’s exceedingly 
diversiform and scattered works; his bibliographic titles extend to 939, 
and “Rafinesquiana” to 134. 
