Following the link to the bio on Milne Edwards and came across a really
fascinating link to the scientists, artists, and educators of New Harmony,
Indiana, USA.  New Harmony was (for those unfamiliar), a utopian community
formed in the early 1800s and located on the banks of the Wabash River in
southern Indiana.  It was for a time the home of famous early shell guys
Thomas Say and Charles Alexandre Lesueur.
 
The site constructed by Clark Kimberling of Evansville University in
Indiana (http://cedar.evansville.edu/~ck6/bstud/nh.html)  has a wealth of
information on Say, Lesueur, C.S. Rafinesque and the most famous North
American ichthyologist of all time (and first president of Stanford
University a small college on the west coast) David Starr Jordan.  I have
always been intersted in quirky gents like Rafinesque but it was here that
I first learned that he planned on setting up (and I quote from the page
here) "a utopian community in Illinois, the centerpiece of which would be a
university specializing in the agricultural and mechanic arts. This
theoretical "Central University of Illinois" even published a few books and
pamphlets before the death of its patron ended it. These have been
something of an enigma for historians of the present-day University of
Illinois. Rafinesque's institution curiously anticipated by more than two
decades the land-grant university that actually came into being-even down
to the name of the town for its seat. Rafinesque thought "Agathopolis"
appropriate, which is phony Greek but perhaps no less euphonious than
"Urbana," which is phony Latin."
 
Stanford had its Jordan we could have had our Rafinesque (a man who
formally described and named lightning!).  I can only dream of what might
have been.
 
Kevin
 
 
Kevin S. Cummings
Illinois Natural History Survey
607 E. Peabody Drive
Champaign, IL 61820
[log in to unmask]
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cbd/collections/mollusk.html