AN ECCENTRIC NATURALIST. 167 
in our admiration of his great achievements. Le Sueur is 
remembered as the ‘first to explore the ichthyology of 
the great American lakes. lLaboring with these, and 
greatest of them all in respect to the extent and range 
of his accomplishments, is one whose name has been 
nearly forgotten, and who is oftenest mentioned in the 
field of his best labors with pity or contempt.’’? 
It is doubtless true that while, as Professor 
Agassiz has said, Rafinesque “was a better man 
than he appeared,” and while he was undoubtedly 
a man of great learning and of greater energy, his 
work does not deserve a high place in the records 
of science. And his failure seems due to two 
things: first, his lack of attention to details, a 
defect which has vitiated all of his work; and, 
second, his versatility, which led him to attempt 
work in every field of learning. As to this, he 
says himself: — 
“It is a positive fact that in knowledge I have been a 
botanist, naturalist, geologist, geographer, historian, poet, 
philosopher, philologist, economist, philanthropist. By 
profession a traveller, merchant, manufacturer, brewer, 
collector, improver, teacher, surveyor, draughtsman, archi- 
tect, engineer, pulmist, author, editor, bookseller, libra- 
rian, secretary, and I hardly know what I may not 
become as yet, since, whenever I apply myself to any- 
thing which I like, I never fail to succeed, if depending 
on myself alone, unless impeded or prevented by the lack 
of means, or the hostility of the foes of mankind.” 
But a traveller Rafinesque chiefly considered 
himself; and to him all his pursuits, scientific, lin- 
guistic, historical, were but episodes in a life of 
1 American Naturalist, 1876. 
