One of his many projects, as meritorious as it was impractical, at that time, was a Botanic Garden with a Library and Museum for Lexington, which was then but a small village; though land was actually secured and a start in tree planting begun, the project of course came to nothing and had to be abandoned. Rafinesque also invented, as he believed, the present coupon system of issuing bonds, the "Divitial Invention," as he called it; in 1825 he set out for Washington in order to secure his patent rights, but his journey and idea never brought him any returns. On the contrary, the incident marked the culmination of his troubles with the president of the University and its governing board, whom he seems to have constantly nettled by his independent ways and roaming habits. Upon returning from Washington he found that Dr. Holley, who, he said, "hated and despised the natural sciences" and wished to drive him out altogether, had broken into his rooms during his absence, and had "given one to the students, and thrown all my effects, books and collections in a heap in the other," besides depriving him of certain other privileges. "I took lodgings," he continued, "in town and carried there all my effects; thus leaving the college with curses on it and Holley; who were both reached by them soon after, since he died next year at sea of the yellow fever, caught at New Orleans; having been driven from Lexington by public opinion; and the College has been burnt in 1828 with all its contents." After this unpleasant experience Rafinesque returned to Philadelphia, where he spent the last and saddest part of his checkered career. His insistent ideas, which were undoubtedly the index of an unbalanced mind, increased, especially his mania for describing "new species" of animals and plants; this mania perverted everything that he wrote, especially toward the end of his life, and made him a thorn in the side of every naturalist who tried to verify his work. A non-conformist and a respecter of no authority but his own is never popular, though a part of the antagonism which Rafinesque aroused was due to the conservatism of his age. He boldly advocated organic evolution when almost the whole world believed that species were fixed and unchangeable things, and in many other respects was fifty years ahead of his time; but nothing was ever carefully worked out in his fertile mind, with the consequence that the world paid no heed to his crude and undigested ideas.