296 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
it; in 1825 he set out for Washington in order to secure 
his patent rights, but his Journey and idea never brought 
him any returns. On the contrary, the incident marked 
the culmination of his troubles with the president of the 
University and its governing board, whom he seems to 
have constantly nettled by his independent ways and 
roaming habits. Upon returning from Washington he 
found that Dr. Holley, who, he said, “hated and de- 
spised the natural sciences” and wished to drive him out 
altogether, had broken into his rooms during his ab- 
sence, and had “given one to the students, and thrown 
all my effects, books and collections in a heap in the 
other,” besides depriving him of certain other privi- 
leges. “I took lodgings,” he continued, “in town and 
carried there all my effects; thus leaving the college with 
curses on it and Holley; who were both reached by them 
soon after, since he died next year at sea of the yellow 
fever, caught at New Orleans; having been driven from 
Lexington by public opinion; and the College has been 
burnt in 1828 with all its contents.” 
After this unpleasant experience Rafinesque re- 
turned to Philadelphia, where he spent the last and 
saddest part of his checkered career. His insistent 
ideas, which were undoubtedly the index of an unbal- 
anced mind, increased, especially his mania for describ- 
ing “new species” of animals and plants; this mania 
perverted everything that he wrote, especially toward 
the end of his life, and made him a thorn in the side of 
every naturalist who tried to verify his work. A non- 
conformist and a respecter of no authority but his own 
is never popular, though a part of the antagonism which 
Rafinesque aroused was due to the conservatism of his 
age. He boldly advocated organic evolution when al- 
most the whole world believed that species were fixed 
