to England and Russia. The Sicilians thought that he was using it as a dye-stuff, and this, said he, "I let them believe." Nearly two hundred thousand pounds had been shipped by him before the secret of the trade was discovered, since which time the Sicilians have prosecuted the business on their own account, lie began to turn his attention to the animals of the sea, and here arose his passion for ichthyology. All the red-shirted Sicilian fishermen brought to him the strange creatures which came in their nets. In 1810 he published two works on the fishes of Sicily, and for our first knowledge of very many of the Mediterranean fishes we are indebted to these Sicilian papers of Rafinesque.
It is unfortunately true, however, that very little real grain to science has come through this knowledge. Rafinesque's descriptions in these works are so brief, so hasty, and so often drawn from memory, that later naturalists have been put to great trouble in trying to make them out. A peculiar, restless, impatient enthusiasm is characteristic of all his writings, the ardor of the explorer without the patience of the investigator.[1]
In Sicily, Rafinesque was visited by the English ornithologist. William Swainson. Swainson seems to have been a great admirer of "the eccentric naturalist," and of him Rafinesque says: "Swainson often went with me to the mountains. He carried a butterfly-net to catch insects with, and was taken for a crazy man or a wizard. As he hardly spoke Italian, I had once to save him from being stoned out of a field, where he was thought to seek a treasure buried by the Greeks." Rafinesque now invented a new way of distilling brandy. He established a brandy-distillery, where, said he, "I made a very good brandy, equal to any made in Spain, without ever tasting a drop of it, since I hate all strong liquors. This prevented me from relishing this new employment, and so I gave it up after a time."
Finally, disgust with the Sicilians, and fear of the French wars, caused Rafinesque, who was, as he says. "a peaceful man," to look again toward the United States. In 1815 he sailed again for America, with all his worldly goods, his reams of unpublished manuscripts, his bushels of shells, and a multitude of drawings of objects in natural history. According to his own account, the extent of his collections at that time was enormous, and from the great number of scattered treatises on all manner of subjects which he published in later years, whenever he could get them printed, it is fair to suppose that his pile of manuscripts was equally great. A considerable number of his note-books, and of papers for which, fortunately for scientific nomenclature, he failed to find a publisher, are now preserved in the United States National Museum. These manuscripts are remarkable for two
- ↑ Dr. Elliott Coues has wittily suggested that as the words "grotesque" "picturesque," and the like, are used to designate certain literary styles, the adjective "rafinesque" may be similarly employed for work like that of the author now under consideration.
