168 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
travel. Two lines of doggerel French were his 
motto: — 
“Un voyageur dés le berceau, 
Je le serai jusqu’au tombeau ” 
“A traveller from the cradle, 
I’m a traveller to the tomb.” 
Long before the invention of railroads and 
steamboats he had travelled over most of south- 
ern Europe and eastern North America, With- 
out money except as he earned it, he had gathered 
shells and plants and fishes on every shore from 
the Hellespont to the Wabash. 
Concerning one element of Rafinesque’s charac- 
ter I am able to find no record. If he ever loved 
any man or woman, except as a possible patron 
and therefore aid to his schemes of travel, he him- 
self gives no record of it. He speaks kindly of 
Audubon; but Audubon had furnished him with 
specimens and paintings of flowers and fishes. 
He speaks generously of Clifford, at Lexington; 
but Clifford had given him an asylum when he 
was turned out of Transylvania University. No 
woman is mentioned in his Autobiography except 
his mother and sister, and these but briefly. His 
own travels, discoveries, and publications filled 
his whole mind and soul. 
Rafinesque died in Philadelphia, in 1840, at the 
age of fifty-six. He had been living obscurely in 
miserable lodgings; for his dried plants, and his 
books published at his own expense, brought him 
but a scanty income. His scientific reputation 
had not reached his fellow-lodgers, and his land- 
lord thought him “a crazy herb-doctor.” He died 
