Details
RAFINESQUE, CONSTANTINE SAMUEL. Indice d'ittiologia Siciliana ossia
Catalogo Metodico dei Nomi Latini, Italiani, e Siciliani dei Pesci, che si rinvengono in Sicilia...del Signore C. S. Rafinesque Schmaltz. Messina: presso Giovanni del Nobolo 1810.
Small 4to, 199 x 140 mm. (7 7/8 x 5 1/2 in.), modern buckram-backed boards, original printed beige wrappers bound in, stitch holes, small hole to upper wrapper, occasional slight foxing.
FIRST AND ONLY EDITION of the third separately published work of "ONE OF THE GREAT PIONEERS OF NATURAL SCIENCE IN AMERICA" (DAB), PRESENTATION COPY FROM S. S. HALDEMAN TO AMOS BINNEY, two folding engraved plates.
The son of a prosperous merchant from Marseilles and of a Greek-born German mother, Rafinesque (1783-1840) was one of the most prolific writers of his time on nearly every imaginable subject, and principally on the flora and fishes of the New World. Educated by private tutors in Marseilles and Leghorn, he was a precocious child and widely read in several languages. At the age of eleven he started his own herbarium, and, his investigations into zoology and ornithology being somewhat tempered by his reluctance to kill his specimens, his zoological studies focussed instead on icthyology. During his first stay in the United States, from 1802 to 1804, where he had found employment in a Philadelphia counting-house, Rafinesque spent his leisure hours botanizing along the Eastern Seaboard, recording Native American languages, and making the acquaintance of such notables as Benjamin Rush and Thomas Jefferson.
Upon his return to Europe, armed with a considerable quantity of specimens, and with a new double surname that allowed him to pass as an American (Schmaltz was his mother's maiden name), he spent four years as secretary and chancellor to the American consul in Palermo, and then went into business as an exporter of medicinal plants and squills. It was during this period that his investigations into every aspect of Sicilian natural history (which he supported by a large collection of books and manuscripts on the subject), led him to begin publishing what was to be an enormous output -- 939 books and pamphlets are listed by T. J. Fitzpatrick in his Rafinesque: A Sketch of his Life with Bibliography (Des Moines 1911), although "many of his publications are excessively rare, for his method of publishing was as eccentric and irregular as his other habits" (DAB). In 1815, fleeing an unhappy marriage, Rafinesque returned to the United States (not without getting shipwrecked en route), and eventually settled in Lexington, Kentucky, as Professor of botany, natural history and modern languages at Transylvania University, where his brilliance as a teacher earned him reknown, while his inoffensive eccentricities were regarded with affectionate amusement by his many friends. -- Among them was J. J. Audubon, who devotes an entertaining chapter to Rafinesque, "The Eccentric Naturalist" (designated as "M. de T.") in his Ornithological Biography (1831-39), vol. 1, pp. 455-60. Rafinesque retired to Philadelphia in 1826, and continued indefatigably travelling, collecting and and publishing until he was overtaken by ill health. He died penniless, but was given a respectful burial by his colleagues.
In the present work Rafinesque, who had "a passion for announcing new species" (DAB), lists 390 species of Sicilian fish, of which over half he claims to be previously undescribed. Quite of a few of these were indeed new discoveries, and the importance of the work was recognized by his contemporaries and later icthyologists. RARE: the last copy to appear at auction was sold in the Henry Alden Sherwin sale at Parke Bernet on 4 March 1946, for $42.
T. J. Fitzpatrick, Rafinesque: A Sketch of his Life with Bibliography (Des Moines 1911), 18; Nissen ZBI 3272.
Provenance:
Contemporary inscription "Fishes of Sicily" on front wrapper
Samuel Steman Haldeman (1812-1880), Pennsylvanian natural scientist and philologist, presentation inscription on title-page to:
Dr. Amos Binney (1803-1847), noted Boston conchologist and editor of Rafinesque's Complete Writings on Conchology (New York 1864)
Arthur Fairfield Gray, bookplate
Dr. Evan Morton Evans (1870-1955)
Daniel Webster Evans (1907-1966).
Catalogo Metodico dei Nomi Latini, Italiani, e Siciliani dei Pesci, che si rinvengono in Sicilia...del Signore C. S. Rafinesque Schmaltz. Messina: presso Giovanni del Nobolo 1810.
Small 4to, 199 x 140 mm. (7 7/8 x 5 1/2 in.), modern buckram-backed boards, original printed beige wrappers bound in, stitch holes, small hole to upper wrapper, occasional slight foxing.
FIRST AND ONLY EDITION of the third separately published work of "ONE OF THE GREAT PIONEERS OF NATURAL SCIENCE IN AMERICA" (DAB), PRESENTATION COPY FROM S. S. HALDEMAN TO AMOS BINNEY, two folding engraved plates.
The son of a prosperous merchant from Marseilles and of a Greek-born German mother, Rafinesque (1783-1840) was one of the most prolific writers of his time on nearly every imaginable subject, and principally on the flora and fishes of the New World. Educated by private tutors in Marseilles and Leghorn, he was a precocious child and widely read in several languages. At the age of eleven he started his own herbarium, and, his investigations into zoology and ornithology being somewhat tempered by his reluctance to kill his specimens, his zoological studies focussed instead on icthyology. During his first stay in the United States, from 1802 to 1804, where he had found employment in a Philadelphia counting-house, Rafinesque spent his leisure hours botanizing along the Eastern Seaboard, recording Native American languages, and making the acquaintance of such notables as Benjamin Rush and Thomas Jefferson.
Upon his return to Europe, armed with a considerable quantity of specimens, and with a new double surname that allowed him to pass as an American (Schmaltz was his mother's maiden name), he spent four years as secretary and chancellor to the American consul in Palermo, and then went into business as an exporter of medicinal plants and squills. It was during this period that his investigations into every aspect of Sicilian natural history (which he supported by a large collection of books and manuscripts on the subject), led him to begin publishing what was to be an enormous output -- 939 books and pamphlets are listed by T. J. Fitzpatrick in his Rafinesque: A Sketch of his Life with Bibliography (Des Moines 1911), although "many of his publications are excessively rare, for his method of publishing was as eccentric and irregular as his other habits" (DAB). In 1815, fleeing an unhappy marriage, Rafinesque returned to the United States (not without getting shipwrecked en route), and eventually settled in Lexington, Kentucky, as Professor of botany, natural history and modern languages at Transylvania University, where his brilliance as a teacher earned him reknown, while his inoffensive eccentricities were regarded with affectionate amusement by his many friends. -- Among them was J. J. Audubon, who devotes an entertaining chapter to Rafinesque, "The Eccentric Naturalist" (designated as "M. de T.") in his Ornithological Biography (1831-39), vol. 1, pp. 455-60. Rafinesque retired to Philadelphia in 1826, and continued indefatigably travelling, collecting and and publishing until he was overtaken by ill health. He died penniless, but was given a respectful burial by his colleagues.
In the present work Rafinesque, who had "a passion for announcing new species" (DAB), lists 390 species of Sicilian fish, of which over half he claims to be previously undescribed. Quite of a few of these were indeed new discoveries, and the importance of the work was recognized by his contemporaries and later icthyologists. RARE: the last copy to appear at auction was sold in the Henry Alden Sherwin sale at Parke Bernet on 4 March 1946, for $42.
T. J. Fitzpatrick, Rafinesque: A Sketch of his Life with Bibliography (Des Moines 1911), 18; Nissen ZBI 3272.
Provenance:
Contemporary inscription "Fishes of Sicily" on front wrapper
Samuel Steman Haldeman (1812-1880), Pennsylvanian natural scientist and philologist, presentation inscription on title-page to:
Dr. Amos Binney (1803-1847), noted Boston conchologist and editor of Rafinesque's Complete Writings on Conchology (New York 1864)
Arthur Fairfield Gray, bookplate
Dr. Evan Morton Evans (1870-1955)
Daniel Webster Evans (1907-1966).