150 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



JOHN ABBOT, THE AURELIAN. 



BY SAMUEL H. SCUDDER. 



It has been a fortunate thing for the study of butterflies in this country 

 that the earlier students were those who devoted themselves very largely 

 to the natural history of these insects rather than to their systematic or 

 descriptive study. It was indeed a natural and healthy result of the 

 poverty of external resources in earlier times ; and I have thought that it 

 would not be devoid of interest to present a few facts concerning the life 

 and industry of one of these earlier naturalists, who worked to such good 

 purpose and accomplished so much, under circumstances that would now 

 seem very forbidding. 



A unique figure, perhaps the most striking in the early development 

 of natural history in America, is that of a man of whom we know almost 

 absolutely nothing excepting what he accomplished. With one exception, 

 all our knowledge of his personality comes through tradition. No life of 

 him has ever been written, excepting a brief notice by Swainson in the 

 Bibliography of Zoology, to which Mr. G. Brown Goode has kindly called 

 my attention. It is not known when or where he was born, or when he died ; 

 scarcely where he lived, or to what nationality he belonged. Even the 

 town where he worked no longer exists. His name alone remains, and 

 though we have access to not a little of his writing in his own round hand, 

 his signature cannot be discovered.* 



John Abbot was presumably an Englishman, as the name is English, 

 and he is said by Sir. J. E. Smith, to have begun his career by the study 

 of the transformations of British insects. When not far from thirty years 

 old, and probably about 1790, he was engaged by three or four of the 

 leading entomologists of England, to go out to North America for the 

 purpose of collecting insects for their cabinets. After visiting several 

 places in different parts of the Union, he determined to settle in the 

 " Province of Georgia," as Swainson calls it. Here he lived for nearly 

 twenty years in Scriven County, as I am informed by several persons 

 through the kindness of Dr. Oemler, of Wilmington Island, in that State, 

 returning to England probably not far from 18 10, where he was living 

 about 1840, at the age "probably above eighty." It is rumored in 



*Mr. W. F. Kirby has kindly made many researches for me at the British Museum, 

 the Linnsean Society, etc. 



