472 A Neglected Naturalist. [ August, 
belongs to the artist. It is scarcely necessary to say that Audu- 
bon’s paintings of birds are wonderfully accurate, and that his 
skill and truthfulness as a field-naturalist were such that one of 
his descriptions is considered to be worth respect, even if contra- 
dicted by his best successors. Rafinesque had particular reason 
to trust him, for on his denying the existence of a flower Audubon 
had painted, he was led to discover a new genus. Such proof was 
not always possible, and why should he doubt the existence of a 
fish painted in its life colors by the same gifted hand? Valen- 
ciennes and Richardson have described species of fishes that yet 
hold a place in so celebrated systematic literature as the Cata- 
logue of the Fishes of the British Museum, from Chinese draw- 
ings. We may be pardoned for retaining the descriptions of 
Rafinesque from the paintings of Audubon; we may surely drop 
them without reproach to the author. 
His descriptions of the fishes he collected cannot, in many par- 
ticular cases, be surpassed, and are generally recognizable even 
among the cyprinoids or minnows, where, on account of their 
close resemblance to each other, there has always been the most 
confusion. The first good word was spoken for him by Kirtland, 
but the value of his work was not fully recognized until 1856, 
when Professor Agassiz was receiving collections from the tribu- 
taries of the Ohio. In his Fishes of the Tennessee he restored 
many of Rafinesque’s names, and defended his memory against 
the harsh treatment it had received from the few writers who 
had noticed his work, expressing much regret “ that his contem- 
poraries did not follow in his steps, or at least preserve the tra- 
dition ‘of his doings, instead of decrying him and appealing to 
foreign authority against him.” After that time, however, Pro- 
fessor Agassiz made but few contributions to American ichthy- 
ology, and the general neglect continued to such an extent that 
a writer in the employ of the government took the trouble to 
describe badly many of the fishes that Rafinesque had describ 
well, and in our own day authors have made new genera with 
descriptions no better than Rafinesque’s for the same fishes. 
Occasionally, however, as the fishes of the Ohio are hoda 
better known, one of his descriptions has been recognized, n 
recently Prof. David S. Jordan has published a thorough ee 
of Rafinesque’s work, based on collections of a large number 0t 
specimens from the streams in which he fished, and has sentir 
many of his names. The result at last fully justifies all I say ° 
this gifted ichthyologist, for of seventy-nine genera and one hun 
