Rafinesque-Schmaltz Constantine Samuel
    (1783-1840)

    Rafinesque Constantine Samuel Schmaltz, foto da Analyse de la Nature (Palermo, 1815)

    Page 1 of 5
    Constantine Samuel Rafinesque

    Sicily

    Here is one word that is consistently associated with Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz: "genius," often modified by an adjective that is slightly disparaging, such as "eccentric."

    Intellectually, he was arrogant--with justification. Socially, he was unfit--by choice. He would be remarkably successful in a diverse array of fields--only to be honored in none. He would be widely discredited in life, yet more and more honored today as scholars begin to realize just how farsighted were his writings.

    Born in Turkey of a German mother and a French father on October 22, 1783, he grew up in Marseilles, France, in a house of books. By age twelve he had read a thousand of them, built an herbarium, and taught himself Latin. Yet he was totally undisciplined. Although he did have an occasional tutor, he learned only what he wished in his own self-taught school. And what he wanted to learn was botany.[2]

    In 1802, at age nineteen, Rafinesque came to America, apprenticing at the mercantile house of the Clifford Brothers in Philadelphia. Three years later he left America for Sicily, where he developed a successful business. There he was to remain for a decade.[3] Rafinesque's return to the United States in 1815 was a period both of great joy and profound sadness. Unfortunately, after a six-month ocean voyage the ship carrying all of his books, collections and manuscripts foundered off the coast near New London, Connecticut.[4]
    Except for some money, all was lost. His children's mother suddenly left him for a Sicilian actor, his son, Charles Linnaeus had died before he left Sicily, and it would be years before he corresponded with his daughter Emilia. Yet, he was free to wander and to write, and he did both.

    note:
    1. Charles Boewe, the recognized authority on the life and times of Rafinesque questioned the attribution of this miniature to William Birch. He pointed out that Rafinesque was hardly in a position to afford the talents of a noted society painter like Birch. He acknowledged the miniature might have been commissioned but when and by who remains uncertain. The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation considered the miniature to have been painted "in 1810" but this is impossible as Birch was never in Sicily. Boewe suggested the image resembles that done by Falopi (right) in 1810, and thus the assumption of date "1810" for the miniature. See Boewe et al. 1987, pages 103-104.

    2. Rafinesque was born in Galata, a suburb of Constantinople, to Francois and Madeleine Schmaltz Rafinesque. His father was a French merchant then residing in the city but his mother was the daughter of a German merchant family who had long resided in the Levant. The death of Constantine's father in 1793 resulted in a decline in the family's fortune so that any opportunity of a university education was denied him by circumstances. While in Sicily, Constantine altered in last name from Rafinesque to Rafinesque-Schmaltz, adding his mother's name, as he did not wish to be considered French when the French army was poised to invade British-held Sicily.

    3. While in Sicily, Rafinesque was secretary to the U.S. consul. He was involved in the international trade of commodities, the most important being medicinal plants. All during this time he was collecting plants on the island, and here his interest in fish would flourish. By visiting the Palermo market he found several new species that he quickly named and described in two works published in 1810. Rafinesque had two children by a woman he could not marry, he being Protestant and she a Roman Catholic.

    4. Rafinesque stated that he had on board some fifty boxes of books and specimens. The collection supposedly contained about sixty thousand shells alone.
     
    2.- Rafinesque in New York
    Before he left the United States in late December of 1804, Rafinesque had approached Thomas Jefferson asking to be appointed naturalist to one of the President's proposed western expeditions. After some delay, Jefferson sort of agreed to send him on the Red River expedition to be led by William Dunbar and George Hunter. Alas for young Rafinesque, he received word that he would be appointed only after he was in Sicily. Considering that the natural history collections of the Dunbar-Hunter and the Freeman-Custis expeditions were essentially nil, science lost out on both accounts.[6]

    Now, upon his return, without books, collections or family, he set out to recover at least the first two with the support of friends in New York. While in Sicily, Rafinesque had been publishing widely, both books and, especially, articles in scientific journals, most notably the New York-based journal Medical Repository. His journal Specchio delle scienze, (two volumes) published in 1814, and his 1815 book Analyse de la nature may be mentioned as representative contributions; both were published in Palermo. The latter work was particularly significant for here Rafinesque outlined a system of classification for all living organisms that was remarkably novel. For botany it could have been highly significant had he fully described all of the groups he recognized. Instead, he treated only a few in detail as examples, leaving the vast majority of the new names without descriptions. As a result, later authors published many of his new families of plants without giving him credit. And about that he complained bitterly.

    Tradition suggests that Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill [7] took Rafinesque into his home. As a noted student of the natural sciences, he was generous to his fellow naturalists. Alexander Wilson, who would describe the birds gathered on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was an early recipient of his generosity. While Rafinesque lived in Sicily, he published several papers in Mitchill's journal Medical Repository, so in a sense the two men were at least scientifically acquainted. In addition to providing lodging for the near-destitute Rafinesque, Mitchill sought employment for him. Rafinesque became a member of the newly established Lyceum of Natural History in New York and presented its first scientific lecture. At first he possibly was in the field with Mitchill and certainly with the New York botanist John Torrey, but by 1818 he was traveling alone, often into the Allegheny Mountains, to search for all sorts of curious objects. By Rafinesque's count, he collected more than 250 new species of plants and animals on these early trips.

    Rafinesque published numerous critical reviews of floras and manuals published by others, mainly in the American Monthly Magazine. In 1817, he published Florula ludoviciana, only to have his effort severely criticized by others, or, worse yet for Rafinesque, totally ignored. Still, he was traveling widely and he was gradually rebuilding his collection of natural history objects.

    note:
    5. Rafinesque described the genus Dasiphora (daze-IF-fore-ah) for the shrubby potentillas that are now so popular in the garden. Dasiphora floribunda (floor-ah-BUN-dah, referring to the many flowers on the shrub) of North America is closely related to Dasiphora fruticosa (fruit-EH-coal-ah, referring to the shrubby habit) of Europe and Asia and is more properly considered a subspecies. Pursh published Potentilla floribunda (poe-TEN-till-ah) in 1813. He based the name on plants from eastern North America. He felt at the time that the Lewis and Clark specimen from Montana was more like the Old World Potentilla fruticosa than his new species.

    6. Dr. Boewe told me that of 15 Dec 1804 Jefferson wrote to Rafinesque " 'Certainly I should be happy to add your botanical talents to the party [of Hunter and Dunbar], but that it is not in my power to propose any birth [sic] worthy of your acceptance.' Most would consider this a "Chinese rejection slip"--i.e. a negative phrased to spare the feelings of the recipient." The letter did not reach Rafinesque until 1805.
    William Dunbar, a noted local scientist, and George Hunter, a Philadelphia chemist, were selected by Jefferson to explore the southern boundary of the Louisiana Purchase much in the same manner Lewis and Clark were asked to explore the northern boundary. After much delay, Dunbar and Hunter lead a four-month-long expedition up the Ouachita River in Louisiana, an area already partially settled. Based on their findings, Jefferson obtained $5,000 from Congress to examine the Red River region. The actual expedition did not get started until May of 1806, with Thomas Freeman (1794-1821) in charge and Barton-trained Peter Custis (?-1842) acting as the expedition's naturalist. Being on the boundary of Spanish Mexico, there was considerable suspicion of the real intentions of the expedition. After a journey of some 615 miles up the Red River, the expedition was met by Spanish troops and forced to return (Flores 2000). Without a centralized national museum (the Smithsonian Institution would not be established until 1846), the collections of natural objects gathered by Custis were scattered and his report destined to be long forgotten. It was not until 1967 that the botanical report was evaluated (Morton, 1967), and not until 1982 that two plant specimens were relocated and the specimens identified. Interestingly, the Custis specimens were among the Lewis and Clark plants at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia (Flores 1985). Custis described only three plants as new to science in 1806, but none of his name is in use today. The one plant he thought was new, the Osage orange, Maclura pomifera (Raf.) Schneid. [mac-CLURE-ah pome-IF-er-ah), was named (in 1817) from garden material grown from fruits Lewis and Clark had gathered in 1804. Custis did not propose a name for the Osage orange in either 1806 or 1807. Custis did propose the genus name Bartonia, but this had already been published in 1801. The plant Custis had is now known as Orobanche ludoviciana (ore-oh-BANK-ee lude-oh-viss-ee-AHN-ah), a name proposed by Nuttall in 1818.

    7. Samuel Latham Mitchill (1764-1831) had a brilliant career in medicine, natural history and politics. He served in both houses of Congress and held various posts in New York. Mitchill, like Rafinesque, had an incredible mind and could remember even the minutest detail so that he was sometimes called a "walking library" or a "living encyclopedia." He married a widow of substantial means and thus he was able to devote considerable time to botany and zoology, especially the study of fish. Mitchill assisted Lewis in the identification of some of the fish he and Clark saw in the American West. His 1820 United States pharmacopoeia would serve the nation's doctors well for a generation.
     
    3.- Rafinesque at Transylvania
    The year 1819 found Rafinesque in Kentucky, the newly appointed professor of botany at Transylvania University--the first such institution west of the Appalachian Mountains. Lexington, Kentucky, was a small, out-of-the-way place, and this was a perfect setting for him. As was his wont, Rafinesque immediately set the presses to roll. He published Annals of nature wherein he proceeded to describe most of the new genera and species of plants and animals he was finding, with the promise this would be a yearly exercise. In 1821, the "first volume" of Western Minerva appeared. Then, in 1825, came Neogenyton, where he described 66 new genera of plants for North America. Not unlike a genius, Rafinesque also taught French and Italian and later served as the University's librarian.

    The outrage from his fellow American and European botanists was immediate and intense. Almost without exception he was condemned for the minor and insignificant differences that he felt qualified certain groups of plants to be separated as new genera. For many, the proliferation of generic names in Neogenyton and elsewhere was more of an annoyance than anything else and, as a result, the great majority simply ignored the names, and almost anything else Rafinesque published.

    Life in Lexington was not going smoothly either. It seems that Professor Rafinesque tended to miss more classes than his students, and when he taught, his lectures were often far beyond what his students could comprehend. Then there was the matter of the apparent affair with the wife of the university president. Not surprising, in 1826, the president fired Rafinesque and forced him to leave the city. As a result, Rafinesque returned to Philadelphia, where he spent the rest of his life.

    But, not before placing a curse upon the university. Today, Rafinesque's curse still plagues the institution, at least in theory, as the entire week before Halloween is devoted to "Rafy," and there may or may not still be a secret society that bears his name.[8]

    note:
    7. This beautiful western species was named, in 1840, by Rafinesque, who knew it only from a published illustration. The seeds of the species were gathered in Canada and grown in England. There are several closely related species in North America, yet Rafinesque was able to recognize this as a new species although no one else, up to the time, had realized this was not the same as the eastern North American species. Even the shootingstar collected by Lewis and Clark in 1806 went unnamed until 1930.

    8. Transylvania University was founded in 1780 and remains today a fine private, liberal arts institution. Known to its faculty and students alike as "Trancy," the institution abounds with stories of "Rafy." The curse Rafinesque is supposed to have uttered upon leaving the institution at the President's request was something like "Damn thee and thy school as I place curses upon you!" Although not anywhere near Lexington, when the university's main administration building, Old Morrison, burned to the ground, and then the president who fired Rafinesque died shortly thereafter, Rafinesque's curse was blamed and thus started the tradition. Supposedly, the effects of the curse are felt every seven years. A group of former students--reportedly members of an organization called the Hemlock Society--disinterred Rafinesque's body from its pauper's grave in Philadelphia and brought his remains back to the University in 1924. As is only fitting with a curse, when Old Morrison burned again in 1969, every room was gutted except the one where Rafinesque was entombed. Today, students celebrate Rafinesque Week just before Halloween, and on Halloween night some lucky raffle winner gets to spend the night in the tomb. For anyone familiar with university dining halls, it does not take much imagination to understand why the one at Transylvania University of called "The Rafskeller."
     
    4.- Rafinesque in Philadelphia
     Rafinesque returned to Philadelphia in the spring of 1826 laden with some 40 trunks of specimens. In a sense it was a sad return. His father had died there in 1793 of the yellow fever he had contracted in Philadelphia. Now the son was without immediate employment, but as always Rafinesque was inventive. He gave public lectures, organized a bank for working people, and capitalized on his latest interest, medicinal plants. The first volume of his two-volume Medical flora; or manual of the medical botany of the United States of North America was published in 1828 (the second in 1830) and sold well. He found a patron in Charles Wetherill and began to published dozens of books on natural history, philosophy and linguistics.

    His Atlantic journal was published in eight parts from the spring of 1832 until the winter of 1833. As a supplement to the later parts he issued Herbarium rafinesquianum, where he described numerous new species of plants based on the specimens then in his possession. It was at this time that Rafinesque took a scientific interest in the plants and animals mentioned by Lewis and Clark. In addition to the six species of conifers mentioned here, he also established the scientific name for the prairie dog, the white-footed mouse and the mule deer. In addition, he described the blue elderberry as Sambucus cerulea [sam-BUK-us sear-OOL-ee-ah], taking his features from the description Lewis wrote on February 7, 1806.

    For North American botany, Rafinesque began to publish a series of books. Unlike his earlier works, however, the publications that began to appear starting in 1836 were often a jumble of confusion. None was truly organized into anything resembling a coherent manual or flora. It was often as if the arrangement and even the writing were no more than a flow of thoughts derived from something randomly gathered from his herbarium. It is true that his works were to be mere supplements to floras published by others, but whose flora was rarely identified. The New flora and botany of North America (in four parts, each with a different subtitle, 1836-1838) was rapidly followed by Flora telluriana (in four parts, 1837-1838), Alsographia americana (1838), and Sylva telluriana (1838). Thousands of new species and hundreds of new genera were proposed.

    note:
    10. The genus name Rafinesquia was proposed three times. Rafinesque himself published the first two attempts (in 1836 and in 1838). In 1841, Thomas Nuttall proposed the name a third time, and by international agreement, his name has been "conserved" so that it might be used. This genus is a member of the sunflower family Asteraceae and consists of two species found in the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico. Rafinesque never saw specimens of either species.
     
    5.- Rafinesque at Transylvania Aga
    Death came to Rafinesque in 1840, the result of cancer. Aside from the sale of his collections--which were sold as junk--his passing went largely unnoticed. Elias Durand, then a botanist at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, went through the stable where Rafinesque's collections were in storage for some three years after his death and took relatively little for posterity. The rest was destroyed, already badly damaged by mold, mice and weather through neglect. For some reason, what Rafinesque worked most of his professional life to build was allowed to deteriorate following his death. [12]
    His library was sold and scattered. Yet, even in death, myth and Rafinesque were to be synonymous.

    Tradition has it that Rafinesque had long lived in what could only be described as wretched poverty and died in a garret. His body was supposedly removed through a window by rope and buried to keep the landlord from selling his remains to a medical school. Tradition also has it that he was buried as a pauper. And most significantly, tradition proclaims that his remains were eventually disinterred and taken back to Transylvania University by a group of former students.

    And the facts? According to Boewe, Rafinesque lived in a rented house in a modest section of Philadelphia. He rented the entire house, devoting most of its space to his collection. He published numerous books and journals in his later years, all at his own expense, and while the combination of housing and publishing took much of his available cash, he was hardly living in abject poverty as so often stated. No doubt some of this was made possible as a result of the patronage provided by Charles Wetherill, a chemist and Philadelphia businessman. Even at the end, one or even two doctors attended him as well as "a woman of the house" who was probably in constant attendance--hardly an indication of a poor person.

    Rafinesque died of stomach and liver cancer according to a detailed autopsy performed on 19 September 1840, the day after he died. The body was not spirited away for the autopsy probably took place in the house where Rafinesque died. Rafinesque was buried in the Philadelphia Cemetery (later called Ronaldson's Cemetery). At the time the cemetery was well cared for and park-like in both appearance and use. The funeral expenses were sixteen dollars, a modest amount by contemporary standards. The coffin was of oak; there is no evidence a member of the clergy attended.

    In 1919, Rafinesque's gravesite was located and a marker erected by Anthony M. Hance, Samuel N. Rhoads and Henry C. Mercer, all of Pennsylvania. News of this event reached Lexington, and the librarian at what was then Transylvania College, Elizabeth Norton, wrote to Mercer expressing thanks. By 1919, Ronaldson's Cemetery was in a profound state of neglect; it was also full. Fearing that the cemetery would be destroyed, Norton promoted the idea of returning the remains of Rafinesque to Lexington. In 1987, Boewe described the efforts made by Norton and her Philadelphia brother, James A. Spencer, to obtain the remains. In February of 1924, Transylvania's Dean Thomas Macartney went to Philadelphia and obtained some remains. These were subsequently laid to rest in a place of honor in Old Morrison and the tomb marked by an epitaph taken from Rafinesque's 1836 autobiography, A Life of Travels.

    What is perhaps not always appreciated by modern society is that a single gravesite was frequently reused, sometime many times over. The first person buried in a given spot would be interred deep enough to allow subsequent coffins to be positioned above the earlier coffin or coffins. In the case of Rafinesque, he was buried above two other persons and eventually three more were buried above him.

    According to Boewe, this fact was unknown to those who went searching for Rafinesque's remains in the winter of 1924. All the evidence now suggests that one Miss Mary Passimore resides in Rafinesque's tomb at Transylvania University.

    Ronaldson's Cemetery is now gone. The site is a playground. The bodies--or at least some of the bodies--were removed to Forest Hills Cemetery in the Somerton section of Philadelphia. It is not known if Rafinesque went there or remained behind. What now seems certain is that he did not end up in Kentucky. Like his father, he too lies in an unmarked Philadelphia grave.

    A year after Rafinesque died, Asa Gray, the botanist at Harvard University, penned the line that has come to be associated with the memory of Constantine Samuel Rafinesque: "A gradual deterioration will be observed in Rafinesque's botanical writings from 1819 to 1830, when the passion for establishing new genera and species appears to have become a complete monomania." History has not been kind to the body or the memory of Rafinesque. Like Meriwether Lewis, much of Rafinesque's life remains steeped in myth.

    References
     

    • Boewe, C. 1982. Rafinesque: A sketch of his life with bibliography by T. J. Fitzpatrick, revised by Charles Boewe. M & S Press, Weston, Massachusetts.
    • Boewe, C. 1987. Pennsylvania Mag. Hist. Biography 61: 213-235.
    • Boewe, C., G. Reynaud & B. Seaton (eds.) 1987. Précis ou abrégé des voyages, travaux, et recherches de C. S. Rafinesque; The original version of A Life of Travels. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.
    • Call, R. E. 1895. The life and writings of Rafinesque. John P. Morton & Co., Louisville, Kentucky. [Facsimile edition in Sterling; see below.]
    • Fitzpatrick, T. J. 1911. Rafinesque: A sketch of his life with bibliography by T. J. Fitzpatrick. Historical Department of Iowa, Des Moines. [Facsimile edition in Sterling; see below.]
    • Flores, D. (ed.). 1984. Thomas Jefferson & southwestern exploration: The Freeman & Custis accounts of the Red River Expedition of 1806. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
    • Flores, D. 2000. A very different story: Exploring the Southwest from Monticello with the Freeman and Custis Expedition of 1806. Montana. The magazine of western history Vol. 50, No. 1: 2-17.
    • Kastner, J. 1977. A species of eternity. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
    • Merrill, E. D. 1949. Index rafinesquianus. Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts.
    • Morton, C. V. 1967. Freeman and Custis' account of the Red River Expedition of 1806, an overlooked publication of botanical interest. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 48: 431-459.
    • Rafinesque, C. S. 1836. A life of travels and researches in North America and South Europe. Published by the author, Philadelphia. [Reprinted in Chronica Botanica (8: 298-353. 1944) with an introduction by E. D. Merrill.]
    • Reveal, J. L. 1992. Gentle conquest. The botanical discovery of North America with illustrations from the Library of Congress. Starwood Publishing, Washington, D.C.
    • Reveal, J. L. & J. S. Pringle. 1993. "Taxonomic botany and floristics," pp. 157-192. In: Flora of North America Editorial Committee (ed.), Flora of North America north of Mexico. Volume 1. Oxford University Press, New York. See http://www.inform.umd.edu/PBIO/usda/fnach7.html/ for an online version.
    • Sterling, K. B. 1978. Rafinesque, autobiography and lives. Arno Press, New York.

    I am grateful to Dr. Charles Boewe for providing me with additional information on Rafinesque and for calling attention to several misstatements in my initial presentation. Those interested in Rafinesque should look for a 120-page, paperback supplement to his 1982 Rafinesque bibliograph--titled "Mantissa"--published in 2001 by M & S Press.

    by-James L. Reveal

    note:
    11. Pedicularis groenlandica [pee-DICK-you-lair-ess grun-LAN-dee-kah] was one of the already known species found by Lewis and Clark near modern-day Kamiah, Idaho. Its curious arrangement of the floral part led one twentieth century botanist to propose the genus Elephantella [ella-FAN-tell-ah]. This is species is markedly different from most other members of Pedicularis and it is surprising that Rafinesque did not describe the new genus himself.

    12. The destruction of Rafinesque's natural history collection, even in its deteriorated condition, was one of the great tragedies in systematic biology. Rafinesque named more than 6,500 new species of plants over his lifetime, and without the whole of his herbarium it is often difficult to know exactly what he had before him when he named his plants. Elias Magliore Durand (1794-1873) was a talented botanist and a good curator. He knew what a collection of plants ought to be like. What he could not appreciate in 1843-1844 (when he purchased the collection) was that some seventy years later botanists would establish the "type method" for determining the application of names. In other words, by consulting a specific specimen one would be able to learn exactly how a given name was to be applied. With Rafinesque's names, this is often impossible to accomplish because there is not type specimen to examine. Durand seemingly had a falling out at the Academy of Natural History in his later years and decided to send his personal herbarium of nearly 8000 sheets to Paris. There one can see a few of the Rafinesque specimens today, but because they generally lack labels, it is difficult to know exactly what came from Rafinesque's collection. Other Rafinesque plant specimens may be seen at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and at the near by Westchester University. It was Rafinesque's dream to establish a university and house his collections therein. For systematic biology, this failure will always remain a tragic loss.  

    Rafinesque Constantine Samuel
    (1783-1840)

    During his lifetime, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840) was not appreciated for his abilities as agifted naturalist. He produced over 900 works on awide variety of subjects, describing many new species
    of plants and fishes. Charles Darwin ultimately recognized him as one of the first naturalists to champion
    the idea of natural plant classification. Rafinesque believed that each species that deviated from the norm
    was capable of becoming a new species.

    was born in Galata, a suburb of Constantinople, Turkey, on August 22, 1783. His father was a prosperous French merchant from Marseilles. His mother, Madeleine Schmaltz, was born in Greece of German parents. Rafinesque went by the name Rafinesque-Schmaltz until 1814 when he dropped his mother's maiden name. During the Napoleonic Wars the Rafinesque family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to escape the violence. Rafinesque's father died there of yellow fever. His mother took Rafinesque, along with his brother and sister, back to France. From there the family fled to Leghorn, Italy, to escape political upheaval in France. The family lived there from 1792 to 1796. His mother, a cultured and independent woman, had her children educated by private tutors.

    Precocious Child

    Rafinesque was only eleven when he began the systematic collection of herbs. He also intended to collect birds. After shooting a Titmouse, he became so upset that he only killed for food for the rest of his life. By the age of twelve Rafinesque believed that he had read at least a thousand books on a wide range of subjects. He also claimed to have studied 50 languages by the age of 16 including Chinese, Hebrew, and Sanskrit. Rafinesque's education by tutors and his separation from young men his own age caused him difficulties throughout the rest of his life. He never acquired the discipline of the trained scientist and was ignored by many of his contemporaries.

    During his youth, Rafinesque also lived in Piza, Genoa, and Marseilles. In 1800, he was apprenticed to a merchant who had been a friend of his father and worked in Leghorn, Italy. Rafinesque and his brother decided to travel to Philadelphia, Pennyslvania where he lived for three years. During part of that time he worked in the counting house of the Clifford brothers. He also found much time to travel and continue his study of plants and animals. In Philadelphia he met many scientists such as Benjamin Rush, Thomas Forrest, Mosses Marshall, and William Bartram. He also traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with President Thomas Jefferson. There he talked to a group of Osage Indians and acquired knowledge of their language. He studied the botany of southern New Jersey and the dismal swamp of Virginia. By the time Rafinesque and his brother returned to Leghorn in 1804, he had a large collection of botanical specimens.

    The Sicilian Years

    For the next ten years, from 1805 to 1815, Rafinesque lived in Palermo, Sicily. He considered these years to be the high point of his life. He explored Mount Etna, made hundreds of sketches of the flora of the area, collected specimens, and studied the ichthyology of the waters around Sicily. During this time he published many pamphlets and wrote for a number of periodicals. To support himself, he worked as the secretary and chancellor to the American council. By 1808, he opened his own business exporting squills and medicinal plants. He was a good businessman and, when he put his mind to it, did quite well.

    Rafinesque married Josephine Vaccaro in 1909 and produced two children; a daughter, Emily, who became an actress, and a son who died in infancy. His wife showed no interest in his work and may have had affairs with other men. Rafinesque was unable to get his Sicilian portfolios published and was refused the chair of botany at the University of Palermo. He later claimed that he loved the climate and the soil of Sicily, but hated the deceit of women. In 1815, he packed up his personal belongings, as well as his medicinal plants and merchandise, and sailed for the United States, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

    Returned to America

    His third voyage to America of over 100 days ended in disaster. He was shipwrecked off Fisher's Island, at the entrance to Long Island Sound. He lost everything, including all of the work he had produced over the last 20 years. He was naked and destitute, after almost drowning. His wife, upon hearing of his plight, soon married a comic actor. Rafinesque was humiliated and kept the story of his marriage a secret until his death.

    Samuel Latham Mitchell became his friend and introduced him to the naturalists in New York. Zaccheus Collins, the Quaker naturalist, did the same in Philidelphia. During part of this time he supported himself as a tutor in the Livingston household at Clermont. In his spare time, he explored the Hudson Valley, Lake George, Long Island, and surrounding regions. In 1818, Rafinesque embarked on a 2,000 mile tour to the west of the Alleghenies. As he proceeded mostly on foot, he made many important botanical discoveries.

    Rafinesque traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, in the spring of 1818 to visit his friend John D. Clifford. Clifford was instrumental in getting Rafinesque appointed to a post as professor of botany, natural history, and modern languages at Transylvania University. Though his friend died two years later, Rafinesque managed to hold on to his post until 1826. He was considered a brilliant teacher. During this period he traveled through Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Finally in 1825, he journeyed through Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Unfortunately, Rafinesque did not keep organized records of the flora and fauna he observed during these travels. He left mostly fragments of writing and sketchy descriptions. His collection of possibly 50,000 specimens was damaged by vermin and discarded by curators who dismissed Rafinesque's work as hopelessly unrewarding. His work was never taken seriously during his lifetime.

    Championed Natural Plant Classification

    Because the earliest validly published description had to be accepted according to the rule of priority in systemic biology, later naturalists had to recognize Rafinesque. He was ahead of his time in the introduction of natural plant classification in the United States. Rafinesque believed that Jussieu's natural plant selection should replace Linnaeus' artificial sexual system of classification. According to Rafinesque in his work Flora telluriana 1, life is ruled by great laws including symmetry, perpetuity, diversity, and instability. Symmetry gives the bodily forms to genera, molding typical frames. The original primitive forms are perpetuated by reproduction. All living bodies are compelled to diversify and no two individuals are exactly alike. The last great law is instability. No form is perpetual. All living forms are born, grow, decay, and die; some quickly, while others take years. Writing in the Atlantic Journal in the spring of 1833, Rafinesque stated that "every variety is a deviation which becomes a species as soon as it is permanent by reproduction. Deviations in essential organs may then gradually become new genera." With this statement he anticipated the future of biological thought.

    Rafinesque had many interests in addition to botany and ichthyology. He wrote about banking, the Bible, and poetry. Rafinesque endorsed the construction of the Panama Canal, believed that culturing pearls in mussels was a viable industry, and that houses and ships could be built of fireproof materials. He developed and marketed a vegetable remedy for tuberculosis that was never patented. Rafinesque began a savings bank primarily to finance his own publications. He was also the first to suggest that the Mayan system of ideographs was partly syllabic.

    As one of the most widely traveled naturalists in America, Rafinesque had the opportunity to meet the noted scientists of his day and was on friendly terms with most of them. After leaving Transylvania University, he lived in Philadelphia until his death from stomach cancer on July 18, 1840. His friends described him as a little dried up old Frenchman. Only two pictures of him have been verified. He continued to travel and publish until his death, ultimately bankrupting himself. His best known works are Ichthyologia Ohioensis, (1820), Medical Flora of the United States, (1828), and A Life of Travels, (1836). In all, he published at least 900 other works. Most of his drawings and writings are out of print. Rare copies can still be found. He died in poverty in Philadelphia and his friends stole his body for burial before his landlord could sell it to a medical school. In 1924 his remains were moved to the campus of Transylvania University at Lexington, where he was reinterred with honor.

    Books

    Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975.

    Elliot, Clark A. Biographical Dictionary of American Science: The Seventeenth Through the Nineteenth Centuries, Greenwood Press, 1979.

    Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Incorporated, 1995.


    Rafinesque Constantine Samuel
    (1783-1840)

    Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz
    as he is known in Europe, (October 22, 1783-September 18, 1840) was a nineteenth-century polymath who made notable contributions to the study of prehistoric earthworks in North America, Mesoamerican ancient linguistics, and botany and zoology. His personal life was erratic.

    Many have called him a genius; he was also an eccentric autodidact. He was very successful in various fields of knowledge, as a zoologist, botanist, malacologist, meteorologist, writer, evolutionist, polyglot, and translator. He wrote prolifically on such diverse topics as anthropology, biology, geology, and linguistics; but was honored in none during his lifetime. Today, scholars agree that he was far ahead of his time in many of these fields.

    Biography
    Rafinesque was born in Galata, a suburb of Constantinople. His father F.G. Rafinesque was a French merchant from Marseilles. His mother M. Schmaltz was of German descent and born in Constantinople. Rafinesque spent his youth in Marseilles and was mostly self-educated. By the age of twelve, he had learned botanical Latin and had begun collecting plants for a herbarium.

    In 1802, at the age of nineteen, Rafinesque went to America, where he made the acquaintance of most of the young nation's few botanists. In 1805 he returned to Europe and settled in Palermo, Sicily. He became so successful in trade that he could retire by age twenty-five and devote his time entirely to natural history. For a time Rafinesque also worked as secretary to the American consul. During his stay in Sicily he studied plants and fishes, naming many species of each.

    Career in the United States
    In 1815, after his son died, Rafinesque left his common-law wife and returned to the United States. When his ship Union foundered near the coast of Connecticut, he lost all his books (50 boxes) and all his specimens (including more than 60,000 shells.) Settling in New York, Rafinesque became a founding member of the newly established "Lyceum of Natural History." By 1818, he had collected and named more than 250 new species of plants and animals. Slowly he was rebuilding his collection of objects from nature.

    To observe and compare, to correct or approve by good names and new facts that convince and improve.
    —Prof. C. S. Rafinesque. 1936, Title Page
    In 1819 Rafinesque became professor of botany at Transylvania University, Lexington (Kentucky), where he also gave private lessons in French and Italian. He started recording all the new species of plants and animals he encountered in travels throughout the state. In 1817 his book Florula Ludoviciana drew severe criticism from fellow botanists, which caused his writings to be ignored. He was considered an erratic student of higher plants.[citation needed] In the spring of 1826 he left the university after quarreling with its president.

    Rafinesque moved to Philadelphia without employment. There he gave public lectures and continued publishing, mostly at his own expense. His book Medical Flora, a Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America (1828-1830) became his most financially successful work. In Herbarium Rafinesquianum, he described numerous new plants.

    He also became interested in the collections of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Among them, he gave scientific names to the Black-tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus), the White-footed Mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) and the Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus).

    In books published between 1836 and 1838, Rafinesque proposed hundreds of new genera and thousands of new species in the major floristic regions of the world. Most of these names were not accepted by the scientific community.
     
    Atlantic Journal (1832-1833) From his intense study, Rafinesque concluded that man's need to classify was the origin of the taxonomic categories called species and genera; that is, that they are man-made generalizations that have no physical existence. He was deeply appreciative of variation in plants. He understood that such variation, through time, will lead to the development of what we call new species. But he had no explanation for the cause of variation, though he did consider hybridity a possible mechanism. He appeared to have some perception of mutation, but never named the concept. He did not develop a theory of evolution earlier than Darwin, as sometimes has been claimed, because Rafinesque had no concept of natural selection and his understanding of geological time was far too shallow.[citation needed]

    Walam Olum
    In 1836 Rafinesque published his first volume of The American Nations. This included Walam Olum, a purported migration and creation narrative of the Lenape ("Delaware Indians"). It told of their migration to the lands around the Delaware River. Rafinesque claimed he had obtained wooden tablets engraved and painted with indigenous pictographs, together with a transcription in the Lenape language, which he was able to use to produce an English translation of the tablets' contents. Rafinesque claimed the original tablets and transcription were later lost, leaving his notes and transcribed copy as the only record of evidence.

    For over a century after Rafinesque's publication, the Walam Olum was widely accepted by ethnohistorians as authentic and Native American in origin. As early as 1849, some scholars professed skepticism. In the 1950s the Indiana Historical Society published a "re-translation" of the Walam Olum, as "a worthy subject for students of aboriginal culture".[1]

    But, later linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological and textual analyses—particularly from the 1980s and 1990s onward— tended towards the view that the Walam Olum account was largely or entirely a fabrication. They described its record of authentic Lenape traditional migration stories as spurious. After the publication in 1995 of David Oestreicher's thesis, The Anatomy of the Walam Olum: A 19th Century Anthropological Hoax, many scholars concurred with his analysis, and concluded that Rafinesque had been either the perpetrator, or perhaps the victim, of a hoax. Other scholars, writers, and some among the Lenape continue to find the account plausible and maintain its authenticity.

    Study of prehistoric cultures
    Rafinesque's made a notable contribution to North American prehistory with his studies of ancient earthworks, especially in the Ohio Valley. He was first to label these the "Ancient Monuments of America." He listed more than 500 such archaeological sites, many of which have since been obliterated by competing development. Rafinesque never excavated. Rather, he recorded the sites visited by careful measurements, sketches, and written descriptions. Only a few of his descriptions found publication, but his work was used by others. For instance, he identified 148 sites in Kentucky. All of those included by E. G. Squier and Davis from that state in their famous Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848) came from his manuscripts.

    Rafinesque also made contributions to Mesoamerican studies. The latter were based on linguistic data he could extract from printed sources, mostly those of travelers. He designated as Taino the ancient language of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Others later used the term to identify the ethnicity of indigenous Caribbean peoples.

    Although mistaken in his presumption that the ancient Maya script was alphabetical in nature, Rafinesque was probably first to insist that studying modern Mayan languages could lead to unraveling of the ancient script. In 1832 he was the first to decipher ancient Maya. He explained that its bar-and-dot symbols represent fives and ones, respectively.[2][3])

    Death
    Rafinesque died of stomach cancer in Philadelphia. He was buried in Ronaldson's cemetery. Unfortunately his considerable collections were sold as junk or destroyed.

    In March 1924 what were thought to be his remains were brought back to Transylvania University and reinterred in a tomb under a stone inscribed, "Honor to whom honor is overdue."


    Cronologia Ornitologica