RAFINESQUE NEITHER KNAVE NOR FOOL. TAL 
what I can learn of Rafinesque, I am satisfied that he was a better man than he 
appeared. His misfortune was his prurient desire for novelties’ and his rashness in 
publishing them, and yet both in Europe and America he has anticipated most of his 
contemporaries in the discovery of new genera and species in those departments of 
science which he has cultivated most perserveringly, and itis but justice to restore them 
to him, whenever it can be done.” (Am. Journ. Se. Arts, 1854, p 354.) 
Without further discussion of this subject, which the writer has else- 
where treated in full (Review of Rafinesque’s memoirs on North Ameri- 
can Hishes, Bull., ix, U.S. Nat. Mus., 1877), I may say that Rafinesque’s 
work as a whole is bad enough, and bad in a peculiarly, original, and 
exasperating way, but that it is much better than some of its critics 
have considered it, and that the trouble it has occasioned in nomencla- 
ture is due to a large extent to causes not inherent in the character of 
the work. A certain amount of conservative odium always attaches to 
a writer who attempts to form natural genera out of time-honored arti- 
ficial combinations. 
I now turn with pleasure to the writings of one, who, though perhaps, 
not so good an ichthyologist as his predecessor, Rafinesque, was a much’ 
more satisfactory writer on Fishes. 
The earliest paper of Dr. Jared Potter Kearelamd on the Fishes of Ohio, 
to be found in his “ Repart on the Zodlogy of Ohio, in the second annual 
report of the Geological Survey of this State, by W. W. Mather, in 1838.” 
This paper consists of a catalogue of 72 species, with notes on their 
habits, distribution, and value as food. 
Later, Dr. Kirtland undertook a much more important work entitled, 
ie phone of the Fishes of Lake Erie, the Ohio River and their tribu- 
taries.” 
This was published as a serial in the Boston Journal of Natural His- 
tory, vols. ili, iv, and v, (1840 to 1846). | 
In this work, 66 species are described belonging to 32 genera. Hach 
gpecies is accompanied by a figure drawn by Dr. Kirtland himself 
These figures are very unequal, some of them, especially of the later ones, 
are very good, while others are scarcely recognizable. It should be re- 
membered that scientific draughtsmen were more difficult to obtain in 
Ohio then than now, and that the author of the paper drew the fishes 
himself because he could find no one else competent to do it 
The faults of this paper are exactly the reverse of those of the Ichthy- 
ologia Ohiensis. They are principally twofold: @) in an undue con- 
servatism, whereby several really distinct species (as Pomouys annularis 
and Pomoxys nigromaculatus) are confounded, and numerous smaller min- 
nows and darters are treated as the young of their larger relatives, and 
(6) in an undue reliance on the opinion of certain other authors, whose 
