80 PROC. ENT. SOC. WASH., VOL. 23, NO. 4, APRIL, 1921 



living there in 1840, but the accounts are somewhat conflicting. 

 What is supposed to be a miniature portrait of John Abbot has 

 been found in the 16th volume of a series of his drawings in the 

 British Museum. This portrait was reproduced by Dr. Scudder 

 as a frontispiece to the first volume of his work on. American 

 Butterflies. The portrait is a left profile bust, apparently done 

 in water colors. It reveals Abbot as a man of spare figure, 

 clothed in the lightest of attire, and therefore probably was 

 executed during his residence in the warm climate of Georgia. 

 The face is strongly featured, the nose being of the distinctly 

 Roman type and quite prominent. The head is thickly clothed 

 with what appears to be natural gray hair and the face is deeply 

 lined and wrinkled beneath and around the corners of the eyes 

 and the mouth, giving the countenance a distinctly humorous 

 expression. The complexion is florid and apparently the eyes 

 are blue. The forehead is deeply lined and in spite of the thick 

 gray hair, the entire appearance of the. portrait is that of a man 

 far beyond middle age, but still retaining youthful vigor. 



John Abbot's correspondent in England was one John Fran- 

 cillon, a silversmith in the Strand, London, who had a famous 

 collection of insects and who made a business of supplying his 

 correspondents with specimens and drawings of plants and 

 insects, made or furnished by Abbot. The specimens were 

 said to be of the very finest quality, as we may well imagine, and 

 sold for sixpence a specimen, by the boxfull. He was also an 

 expert in the art of inflating larvae and dealt in these inflated 

 skins through his agent Francillon. In addition to the work 

 edited by Dr. J. E. Smith, previously referred to, there are 

 deposited in the British Museum no less than 17 quarto volumes 

 of drawings similar to those of the Smith & Abbot publication. 

 These are listed by Dr. W. F. Kirby as follows: 1-4 Coleoptera, 

 5 Orthoptera, Hemiptera, Homoptera and Heteroptera, 6 

 Lepidoptera, Rhopalocera, 7-11 Lepidoptera, Heterocera, 12 

 Neuroptera, Hymenoptera, 13 Diptera, 14 Arachnida, 15 

 Myriopoda, Mallophaga, Acanna, Crustacea, Lepidoptera, 

 (transformations), etc., 16 Portrait, Orthoptera, Coleoptera 

 (transformations), etc., 17 Lepidoptera (transformations). 

 The drawings of the Lepidoptera are not duplicates of those 

 published by Smith except rarely and there are nearly three 

 times as many of them. About a dozen drawings of the trans- 

 formations of the Coleoptera are given, many of which are 

 believed to represent undescribed species. 



Mr. Robert P. Dow has discussed the fragmentary records of 

 Abbot's career in an interesting way. He concludes his article 

 with a letter from Abbot addressed to Dr. T. W. Harris, together 

 with his autograph signature, in a round flowing hand of most 

 remarkable firmness and beauty for a man supposed to have been 

 past 80 years of age at the time. The letter contains errors of 



