AUDUBON AND RAFINESQUE — 295 
affairs in Philadelphia, Rafinesque entered upon his 
new labors at Lexington in the autumn of 1819. He 
was probably the first teacher of these subjects west 
of the Alleghanies, and certainly the first in that section 
of the country to use the present object method in the 
elucidation of natural history. The lot of a pioneer in 
education has never been a sinecure, and the post which 
Rafinesque then filled was not a “chair” but a hard 
“settee.” In those days the classics were in the saddle 
and “rode mankind,” while the natural sciences, when 
tolerated at all, were given short shrift; yet this eccen- 
tric foreigner held his position for seven years and ac- 
complished an extraordinary amount of work. As 
usual he spread his energies over the whole field of 
knowledge, lecturing, writing and publishing on almost 
every subject, but concentrating upon none. Mean- 
while, he roamed far and wide and made extensive col- 
lections. 
While at the Transylvania University Rafinesque 
seems to have applied for the master of arts’ degree, but 
was at first refused, as he said, “because I had not stud- 
ied Greek in a college, although I knew more languages 
than all of the American colleges united, but it was 
granted at last; but the Doctor of medicine was not 
granted, because I would not superintend anatomical 
dissections.” 
One of his many projects, as meritorious as it was im- 
practical, at that time, was a Botanic Garden with a 
Library and Museum for Lexington, which was then 
but a small village; though land was actually secured 
and a start in tree planting begun, the project of course 
came to nothing and had to be abandoned. KRafinesque 
also invented, as he believed, the present coupon system 
of issuing bonds, the “Divitial Invention,” as he called 
