RAFINESQUE AND DR. SHORT

BY CHARLES BOE•VE

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Twelve letters written by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque to Dr. Charles Wilkins Short over a period of nineteen years have been put into print3 These provide valuable information about the life of the celebrated immigrant naturalist, and they throw incidental light on the career of the redoubtable Dr. Short. A man whose edgy tempera- ment precluded many warm personal relationships, Rafinesque enjoyed so extensive a correspondence with only three other acquaintances.• Thus any document which relates to the Short-Rafinesque correspond- ence is of some value. Yet the impression one gets from the one-sided exchange of letters so far available is somewhat like that of overhear- hag one end of a telephone conversation; we hear Rafinesque's part of the dialogue, but Short remains silent. It is to be hoped that all extant letters by Short will one day be published,s Meanwhile, one of them has turned up among the Rafinesque papers in Philadelphia.* It is given below in full.

Lexington, Ky. Sept. 7th 1834.6 Dear Sir- Your communication of the 5th Augt. came to hand some weeks ago; but as you mention your intention of being absent from Phila. until the 1st of Sept. I have delayed writing until now." For the last three or four years I have been very industriously engaged in collecting and preserving the plants of Kentucky,* as my leisure and opportunities afforded, during the spring summer and fall- the winter months, you know, I am confined to Lexington. During the last season I collected very largely, and put up and sent away to various correspondents in Europe and America about 5000 specimens of about 600 species, reserving still for my own Herbarium an abundant supply-- This season I have not been less industrious, and have already collected a very considerable parcel, and hope still to add to it a large number of our autumnal plants-- The season has proved eminently auspicious to the preservation of plants, it having been unusually dry, so that this year's collection is in fine order; and I have avoided the severe pressure hitherto used too indiscriminately in the preparation of my speci- mens. I say this much with the view of informing you what you may expect from me in the way of exchange should we enter upon one; but I have further to remark that it does not suit my convenience to distribute my collec- tion into parcels before the winter; During the spring summer and fall my whole leisure time is employed in traveflinu, collecting, examining, and preparing my plants-- In the winter I devote my laours of leisure to the distribution of those

28 1961] Ra[inesque and Dr. Short .29

which I have to spare, into parcels for my friends, and the arrangement of my own Herbarium. I have already engaged to make out during the ensuing winter parcels for Dr. Hooker; M. Michel; Dr. Booth; (of Europe) Dr. Darlingtoa; Dr. Torrey; Mr. Curtis of N.C.; Mr. Croom, of Florida; Mr. Durand, Dr. Gi'iffith; of the Am. Philos. Soc. of Phila., Dr. Aiken, of Maryland; Dr. Leaven. worth, U. S. Army at Fort Towson, Arkansas, & Mr. Riddell of Ohio. From several of these I have already recd. parcels in anticipation, and am, therefore, in honor bound to supply them; nevertheless I shall have more than sufficient for all these demands, from which I may be able to make out an interesting parcel for yourself. In the meanwhile, however, as you have the plants on hand, and leisure I hope, to put them up, I must desire of you an advance of one parcel, with the assurance that, during the winter, you shall be repaid with interest,s In the selection of a suite from you I would especially wish •:o have specimens of all your north american discoveries- the new genera & species which you have discovered or framed on former discoveries; and especially Western & Southern plants-- In addition to these I should like much to have specimens of foreign and oriental medicinal plants -- a parcel of this kind made out as soon as your leisure permits, and placed in the hands of Mr. J. Dobson of yr. city will reach me safely. I was certainly not apprized of your having published a catalogue of Kentucky plants, much less two of them; In that which we made out, and to which you refer, we did not pretend to give a perfect list, but one of those plants only which we had actually met with here, intended for the convenience of our cor- respondents in making nut a list of their desiderata. Where are your catalogues to be had, I should like much to possess them?9--The lresine celosioides grows abundantly on the margin of the Kentucky river at almost every point where I have visited it, preferring the moist sandy anuvions and shaded situations, flowering from July to October. The Enslenia is still more abundant and in similar situations I have never known it to fail flowering freely in July & August. The Hottonia inflata is also abundant in the lagoon bordering the Licking & Red river, but its flowering time is limited to the first weeks of May. The Podostigma I have met with only on the poorest sandstone hills of Madison county, flowering about the 1st of June-- The Smilax pumila of Mr. Peters parcel to Mr. Durand is more probably the Coc[c]ulus carolinus, D.C. of which we have only found the male vine on the Ky. cliffs and that very rare. I think it probable that I shall visit our Barrens during the present month, when I will bear in mind your wishes concerning the Genlians-- You informed Mr. Durand that the Nelumbium pentapetalum of Walt. grew in a pond near Andersonville in Anderson Cy. Ky. as there is no such place in this state, I conclude that you meant Hendersonville, pray inform• me whether this is so, and at what time you there saw it in flower -- your locality for the N. luteum near Frankfort, has been destroyed by the draining of the pond -- I will thank you to point out any other localities for rare or interesting plants in this state, which you have met with; and you shall have a share of them -- Yours respectfully C. W. Short I desired Mr. Dobson, some time ago, to pay you $2. for the Atlantic Jour. As he seems not to have done it, I will request him stir to attend to it.*° Cordial as the tone of this letter is, Dr. Short had already begun to have misgivings about the erratic and egocentric Rafinesque. The 3O The Filson Club History Quarterly [Vol. 35 peevish postscript to Rafinesque's reply, suggesting that Short doubt- less botanized in a carriage while Rafinesque had to walk, probably did nothing to soften Short's opinion. No doubt his failure to take account of Rafinesque's lists of Kentucky plants was simply the result of oversight--the two publications, like so many of Rafinesque's, appeared in out of the way places. Yet, in the account of the expedition Short and H. H. Eaton made in 1830 from Lexington to the Ohio River, while none of Rafinesque's plants are mentioned among those observed, several of his shells are. Of Unio torulosus Raf. (U. cornutus Barnes; U. foliatus Hildreth) the authors say that "since Mr. Rafinesque's name was given first, it must be adopted, and that of Mr. Barnes, although generally used, laid aside. ''11 And later they remark of Unio triqueter Raf. (U. calceolus Lea) that "Mr. Rafinesque having described and figured this shell under this name first, is entitled to it.''12 Nothing could be fairer. However, when Short wrote a eulogy on his young friend following Eaton's death, he remarked on this joint article, saying that "that part of the communication relating to the shells . . . was exclusively the work of Mr. Eaton. ''• Eaton's cordiality may be accounted for in part at least by the fact that his father, Amos Eaton, professor at the Rensselaer School in Troy, N.Y., had been a personal friend of Rafinesque since 1826, when they first met on one of Eaton's Erie Canal field trips.14 Almost annually after that, Rafinesque visited with Eaton in Troy. The elder Eaton, himself the subject of abuse in Rafinesque's earlier reviews of his books, seemed incapable of harboring a grudge against anybody; his son appears to have had the same cheerful temperament. Dr. Short, who had been in Rafinesque's company twice and then only briefly,1• had weaker personal ties of friendship, and moreover he had a very high standard of scientific workmanship. The truth is that Rafinesque was mostly slipshod in his collecting, preserving, and de- scribing of plants (though it is also true that he labored under great physical difficulties, and always with inadequate financial support). All too often, Rafinesque's pretensions were not borne out by his performance. It is not surprising, therefore, that when Dr. Short set down direc- tions for-young botanists to follow and listed Eastern botanists with whom they might exchange plants he mentioned Thomas Nut[all of Boston, John Torrey of New York, William Darling[on of West Chester, Pa., and Charles Pickering and William P. C. Barton of Philadelphia; but Rafinesque of Philadelphia was conspicuously miss- ing from the list?" Or that when he reviewed a large crop of current books on American botany he merely named Rafinesque as "among the 1961] Rafinesque and Dr. Short 31 contributors of . . . miscellaneous matter to the general stock of our botanical science . . ." and dropped the title of his Medical Flora, unannotated, into a footnote on the last page.1' When, finally, Rafinesque wrote to Short that he had "bought" the herbarium of Zaccheus Collins (actually he got it as part of the settle- ment of his lawsuit against Collins' estate) and, bragging about his coup, offered to sell some of it to Short, TM one can imagine Short's exasperation -- he himself had sent an agent to the Collins sale to bid on the herbarium, and had failed to get it. After Rafinesque's own death Short wrote to Elias Durand, the purchaser of Rafinesque's herbarium after it had lain unattended for some years in a garret. "Did you really find any novelties among his collections[ ?] He used to tell me of his many discoveries in this country, few or none of which have I been so fortunate as to meet with. Among other things he spoke confidently of having found, on the Cumberland Mountains in this State, a new AEsculus with a thorny stem! -- this, like his thirteen species of Dodecatheon, existed only in his own imagina- tion. Judging from a few miserable scraps which he once sent me, I fear you found his collection 'rudis indigestaque moles.' ,,1o Short must have struck a chord of sympathy in the purchaser. Durand's reply is already in print; he lamented, in part, that "it was truly a dunghill... It required indeed a botanical zeal equal to mine to consent [to] transferring to a decent house 6 cart-loads of that prodigious mass of corruption."•° Such was pretty much the consensus in the years immediately fol- lowing Rafinesque's death. X•;riting to S. S. Haldeman, who had acquired many of Rafinesque's papers on ethnology, John G. Morris referred to them as "yr Rafinesque rubbish,''2. while the "official" posi- tion in most of the biological sciences was quietly to ignore everything he had done, even his validly published findings. The justice of this attitude is not here under examination; certainly Rafinesque, both by his personal habits and his methods of work, did a good deal to bring it about, though in recent years much has been accomplished to rehabil- itate his standing as a naturalist.:= At any rate, Dr. Short's growing disenchantment with him was typical rather than eccentric, and his attitude amplifies our knowledge of one small portion of Rafinesque's flamboyant career. 32 The Filson Club History Quarterly [Vol. 35

FOOTNOTES • x Samuel E. Perkins III, "Letters by Rafinesque to Dr. Short in The Filson Club Archives," The Fihon Club History Quarterly, XII (October, 1938), pp. 200-239; P. Albert Davies, "An Unpublished Rafine*que Letter," ibid., XXIII (July, 1949), pp. 199-201. Zacchoas Collins, John Torrey, and William Swainson. ap. Albert Davies• menttons. (op. est.,, p. 199) that a letterbook of Dr. Shorts, botam"cal correspondence, in which he found the Rafinesque letter he publishe•, wm inprivate hands at the time of his article. If it contains copies of Dr. Short's replies to Rafinesque, they should be put into print. 4 Many letters by Rafinesque are extant, though they are widely scattered. The largest single collection is in the library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, but it contains few letters written to Rafinesque. His unsettled life and the relatively, l.ow position of his professional reputation at the time of his death in 1840 were not conaucive to the preservation of personal papers. See Ch•hn Boewe, "The Manuscripts of C. S. Rafinesque (1783-1840), Proceedings o] the American Philosophical Society, CII (Decem- ber, 1958), pp. 590-595. UThis letter falls between the two printed by Perkins, op. cir., p. 233. 'I•he letter is the property of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and is deposited among the Academy's collections at the Library of The American Philosophical Society. It is printed by permission of Dr. J. Percy Moore, Chairman of the Library Committee, Academy nf Natural Sciences. 6 Rafinesque was on one of his annual peripatetic botanical excursions, confined this year to pennsylvania. See Rafinesque, A Life ot Travels (Philadelphia, 1836), Ch. 8. 7The scientific accomplishments of this trip are detailed in C. W. Short and H. Hulbert Eaton, "Notices of Western Botany and Conchology," Transylvania Journal of Medicine and the Assoclalt Sciences, IV (February, 1831), pp. 69-82. Sln his letter of 15 November 1834, Rafinesque says that be has se'q.t a parcel of .66 plant specimens, and has put aside 100 more for Dr. Short (Perkins, op. tlt.,p. 238). This is important in view of what Dr. Short writes to Durand after Rafinesque's death. o RafinesQue answers cryptically at the end of his next letter (Perkins, op. cit., p. 237). The full citations of the two works ace: "Botany of Kentucky," Western Review and Miscellaneous Magazine, I (September, 1819),pp. 92-95, and "Florula Kentuckeqsis," in First Catalogues and Circulars of the Botanical Garden of Transylvania Universtty. . . (Lexington, 1824), pp. 12-16. X°In art entry dated 14 February 1832 in his manuscript day-book covering the years 1832-34 which is preserved in the Library Company of Philadelphia, Rafinesque recorded subscriptions to The Atlantic Iournal his private magazine, for Dr. Short and H. H. Eaton, Short's colleague at Transylvania University. Having received only five dollars from Eaton, Rafinesque canceled Shoct's subscription 19 March 1832. In the next letter, he acknowledge* receipt of two dollars from Dobson on Short's behalf (Perkins, op. cir., p. 233). t•-Shoct and Eaton, "Notices of Western Botany and Conchology," Transylvania ]ournal of Medicine .... IV (February, 1831), p. 75. m Ibid., p. 79. t•C. W. Short, "Biographical Memoir of H. Hulbert Eaton .... " ibid., V (October- December, 1832), p. 477. 14 Ethel M. McAllister, Amos Eaton (Philadelphia, 1941), pp. 256-257. 15Davies, op. cit., p. 199. xe C. W. Short, "... Letter to a Young Botanist," Transylvania/ournal o[ Medicine and the Associate Sciences, VI (February-March, 1833), pp. 61-74. x7 [C. W. Short• '*Bibliographia Botanica '" ibid., VIII (Octube{.,.,-December, 1836), pp. 553-574. The attrit>ution is my own; the artic e is s gned merely "S.' • mDavier, op. cir., pp. 199-200. 10 This is the lar•er t•art of the second !:,aragraph of art unpublished letter by Short to Elias-l•m'and dated•6 •*pril 1856. The letter • the property of the.college o( Ph.•iw'.C•. of Philadelphia and is printed by permss on of the Curator of Historical Collections, . B. McDaniel, 2d. *o Letter given in full by Francis W. Pennell, "How Durand Acquired Rafinesque's Herbarium," Bartonia, No. 23 (1944-1945), pp. 40-45. :t Unpublished letter, Morris to S. S. Haideman, 26 September 1843. By permission of the owner, Mr. Guy K. Haldeman. ,2 Especially the writings of Elmer D. Merrill and Francis W. Pennell.