Note 269 — Chapter XIX · AUDUBON AND RAFINESQUE
Reading edition
Ichthyologia Ohiensis, or Natural History of the Fishes inhabiting the River Ohio and its tributary Streams, preceded by a physical description of the Ohio and its branches. By C. S. Rafinesque, Professor of Botany and Natural History in Transylvania University, Author of the Analysis of Nature, &c. &c. Member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of New-York, the Historical Society of New-York, the Lyceum of Natural History of New-York, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the American Antiquarian Society, the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Naples, the Italian Society of Arts and Sciences, the Medical Societies of Lexington and Cincinnati, &c. &c.
"The art of seeing well, or of noticing and distinguishing with accuracy the objects which we perceive, is a high faculty of the mind, unfolded in few individuals, and despised by those who can neither acquire it, nor appreciate its results."
Lexington, Kentucky: printed for the author by W. G. Hunt. (Price one dollar.) (Pp. 1-90. Lexington, 1820.)
Fitzpatrick (see Bibliography, No. 228) gives a list of 14 copies of this work, the whereabouts of which are known; we can add another from the library of Dr. Jared P. Kirtland, now in the collections of Western Reserve University; it is bound up with Dr. Kirtland's notebook on birds and fishes, and labeled "Scraps of Natural History. My Note Book;" a written notice on the inside of the cover, imploring the finder to return the volume to its owner if lost, is signed by Dr. Kirtland and dated "Cleveland, O., Oct. 16th, 1839." Probably fewer than 20 original copies of the work now exist. It was reproduced in a limited edition, with a sketch of Rafinesque's life and works by Richard Ellsworth Call, published by the Burrows Brothers' Company of Cleveland in 1899.