Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/227

 things—the beauty of the quaint French penmanship and the atrocious badness of the accompanying drawings.

His numerous note-books, written in French, represent each the observations of a busy summer, and these observations, for the most part unchecked by the comparison of specimens, were by him prepared for the press during the winter. To this manner of working, perhaps unavoidable in his case, many of Rafinesque's errors and blunders are certainly due. In one of these note-books I find, among a series of notes in French, the following remarkable observation in English: "The girls at Fort Edward eat clay!" In another place I find a list of the new genera of fishes in Cuvier's "Règne Animal" (1817) which were known to him. Many of these are designated as synonymous with genera proposed by Rafinesque in his "Caratteri" in 1810. With this list is the remark that these genera of Cuvier are identical with such and such genera "proposed by me in 1810, but don't you tell it!"

Rafinesque was six months on the ocean in this second voyage to America; and finally, just as the ship was entering Long Island Sound, the pilot let her drift against one of the rocks which lie outside of the harbor of New London. The vessel filled and sank, giving the passengers barely time to escape with their lives. "I reached New London at midnight," says Rafinesque, "in a most deplorable situation. I had lost everything—my fortune, my share in the cargo, my collections and labors of twenty years past, my books, my manuscripts, and even my clothes—all I possessed, except some scattered funds and some little insurance-money. Some hearts of stone have since dared to doubt of these facts, or rejoice at my losses. Yes, I have found men vile enough to laugh without shame at my misfortunes, instead of condoling with me. But I have met also with friends who have deplored my loss and helped me in need."

I shall pass rapidly over Rafinesque's career until his settlement in Kentucky. He traveled widely in America, in the summer, always on foot. "Horses were offered to me," he said, "but I never liked riding them, and dismounting for every flower. Horses do not suit botanists." He now came westward, following the course of the Ohio, and exploring for the first time the botany of the country. He came to Indiana, and for a short time was associated with the community then lately established by Owen and Maclure at New Harmony, on the Wabash. Though this New Harmony experiment was a failure, as all communities must be in which the drone and the worker alike have access to the honey-cells, yet the debt due it from American science is very great. Although far in the backwoods, and in the long notorious county of Posey, New Harmony was for a time fairly to be called the center of American science, and even after half a century has gone by its rolls bear few names brighter than those of Thomas Say, David Dale Owen, and Charles Le Sueur.