AUDUBON AND RAFINESQUE _ 289 
pute and thought to be an antidote, which in the form 
of syrup was long the bane of childhood; this and other 
medicinal drugs he exported to the European and 
American markets in such quantities that before the 
secret of his trade became known to the jealous Sicil- 
ians, he had reaped from it, in conjunction with his 
other enterprises, a small fortune. During the ten years 
that were spent in Sicily we find him the manager of a 
successful whisky distillery, the chancellor or secretary 
of the American Consulate at Palermo, editor, writer, 
and correspondent of learned men in Europe, as well as 
traveler and explorer in every part of the island, which 
he proposed to monograph with all of its contents. At 
Palermo Rafinesque met the English naturalist, 
William Swainson, his lifelong correspondent; together 
they tramped over the island and together they worked 
for a number of years on the fishes of the western coast.® 
Swainson, who became the friend of Audubon, was one 
of the few who later defended Rafinesque. 
Rafinesque espoused a Sicilian woman of the Cath- 
olic faith, and had by her two children, of whom a 
daughter lived to maturity; this experience seems to 
have embittered him against the sex, for no other 
woman excepting his mother, to whom his Life of 
Travels was dedicated, was ever mentioned in his writ- 
ings, and this one was disinherited in his extraordinary 
will. Through fear of being drafted into the French 
wars, he assumed for a time his mother’s family name of 
Schmaltz, and finally left Sicily in disgust; taking with 
him his fortune and “fifty boxes of personal goods,” 
3“At Palermo,” said Swainson, “I had the pleasure of meeting... 
Rafinesque Schmaltz, whose first name is familiar to most zodlogists. In 
the society of such congenial minds, I passed many happy hours, and 
made many delightful excursions ... by the inducement of the latter, I 
was led to investigate the ichthyology of the western coast.” (See 
Bibliography, No. 170.) 
