Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, the learned, eccentric scientist of Kentucky and the West, was born near Constantinople, Turkey, October 22, 1783. He was of French-German descent. His boyhood years were spent in Italy and in traveling on the Continent. Rafinesque came to America in 1802, and he remained in this country but three years, when he returned to Italy; and there the subsequent ten years of his life were passed. In 1809 he married, after a fashion, a Sicilian woman, Josephine Vaccaro, who bore him two children. Rafinesque returned to America in 1815, and a short time after his arrival, he met his former friend, John D. Clifford, of Philadelphia and Lexington—twin-towns in those days—"the only man he ever loved," who persuaded him to come out to Kentucky. At Henderson, Kentucky, Rafinesque met the great Audubon, who took him under his roof, and who told him many amusing tales of the fishes of the Ohio—which the little scientist believed, as coming from a famous man—and which caused him no end of trouble and work in after years. Audubon ridiculed him to his face, which the simple-minded man could not understand; and in his Journals the ornithologist has much fun at his guest's expense. That he treated him very badly, no one can deny. Through Clifford's influence, probably, Rafinesque was appointed, in 1819, to the chair of natural science and modern languages in Transylvania University. This was during the presidency of Horace Holley, when the old University was at the high-tide of its history, but the diminutive scientist, though heralded as "the most learned man in America," was not received as such in the Blue Grass region of Kentucky an hundred years ago. From the president down to the children of the little city he was looked upon as an impossible creature. Seven of the best years of his life were spent in the service of the University and of the town. His boldest dream for the town was a Botanical Garden, modeled upon the gardens of France, and though he did actually make a splendid start toward this ideal, in the end all his plans came to nothing. In June, 1825, Rafinesque left Lexington, never to return. He went to Philadelphia, where the remaining fifteen years of his life were spent. Death discovered the little fellow among his books, plants, and poverty, September 18, 1840, in a miserable, rat-ridden garret on Race street, Philadelphia. Rafinesque's publications reach the surprising number of 447, consisting of books, pamphlets, magazine articles, translations, and reprints. His most important works are Ichthyologia Ohiensis, or Natural History of the Fishes Inhabiting the River Ohio and its Tributary Streams (Lexington, 1820), a reprint of which his biographer, Dr. Call, has published (Cleveland, 1899); and his Ancient Annals of Kentucky, which Humphrey Marshall printed as an introduction to his History of Kentucky (Frankfort, 1824). The oversheets of this were made into a pamphlet of thirty-nine pages. The little work considers the antiquities of the State, and is the starting point for all latter-day writers upon "the prehistoric men of Kentucky." Imagination and fact run riotously together, yet the work has been correctly characterized as "the most remarkable history of Kentucky that was ever written, or ever will be."

Bibliography. A Kentucky Cardinal, by James Lane Allen (New York, 1894); Life and Writings of Rafinesque, by Richard E. Call (Louisville, Kentucky, 1895); Rafinesque: A Sketch of his Life, by T. J. Fitzpatrick (Des Moines, Iowa, 1911).

GEOLOGICAL ANNALS OF THE REVOLUTIONS OF NATURE IN KENTUCKY

[From Ancient Annals of Kentucky (Frankfort, Kentucky, 1824)]

1. Every complete history of a country ought to include an account of the physical changes and revolutions, which it may have undergone.

2. The documents for such geological survey, are to be found everywhere in the bowels of the earth, its rocks and strata, with the remains of organized bodies imbedded therein, which are now considered as the medals of nature.

3. The soil of Kentucky shows, like many other countries, that it has once been the bed of the sea. In James's Map, the primitive ocean is supposed to have covered North America, by having a former level of 6000 feet above the actual level. Since the highest lands in Kentucky do not exceed 1800 feet above the level of the actual ocean, they were once covered with at least 4200 feet of water.

4. The study of the soil of Kentucky, proves evidently the successive and gradual retreat of the salt waters, without evincing any proofs of any very violent or sudden disruptions or emersions of land, nor eruptions of the ocean, except some casual accidents, easily ascribed to earthquakes, salses and submarine volcanoes.

5. There are no remains of land or burning volcanoes in Kentucky, nor of any considerable fresh water lake. All the strata are nearly horizontal, with valleys excavated by the tides and streams during the soft state of the strata.

6. After these preliminary observations, I shall detail the successive evolution of this soil and its productions, under six distinct periods of time, which may be compared to the six epochs or days of creation, and supposed to have lasted an indefinite number of ages.