March, 1914] Dow: John Abbot. 67 



of honor can demand. The title of the book is: "The Natural His- 

 tory of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia, collected from the 

 observations of John Abbot, with the plants on which they feed." 

 The authorship of every species is now universally credited to 

 " Smith and Abbot." No credit whatever is given for the work done 

 by Abbot, utilized in the volumes of Boisduval and Leconte. 



Who and what, then, was John Abbot of Georgia? If Francillon 

 was uncommunicative, Abbot was more so, especially concerning the 

 first forty years of his life. One wonders whether there might not 

 have been a sinister reason for it. Emphatically, no ! The record of 

 fifty years of Abbot in Georgia shows nothing but a sweet soul. 

 All that is known about the man to the present moment is summarized 

 by Dr. Samuel H. Scudder in Canadian Entomologist, Vol. XX, pp. 

 150-54 and a note by W. F. Kirby, ibid., pp. 230—32. As this volume 

 is in limited circulation, the essential statements follow here. It 

 may be noted that the facts are mainly adduced from his work, the 

 conjectures generally as unsafe as deduction from circumstantial 

 evidence is apt to be. 



Oral tradition is all we have had. It is not known where he was 

 born. That he was an Englishman is assumed from his name. His 

 one portrait shows an Irish face, a frail body, and the cotton jean 

 clothing of a Georgia plantation. Scudder says he was about thirty 

 when he went to America in about 1790, and that he was engaged by 

 three or four leading English lepidopterists to collect for their cabi- 

 nets. The version of the careful Dr. H. Hagen is different. Hagen 

 calls him unequivocally " privatlehrer " — private tutor, the inference 

 being that Abbot went to Georgia in charge of the scion of some 

 wealthy Georgian planter.^ Scudder says he settled after some travel 

 at Jacksonborough, Scriven Co. The correct spelling is Screven. 

 Scudder asserts that he returned to England about 1810, where he was 

 living in 1840, at an age of " probably above eighty." 



Smith says he was given to rearing insects in England from child- 

 hood. Abbot himself says, indirectly, that he was fond of drawing 

 plants all his life. That the portrait in the British Museum collection 

 , of his drawings is of himself and by himself there is no reasonable 



1 As Dr. Hagen has confused in his Bibliotheca two Abbots, one a Scotch 

 clergyman, it is quite possible that the word " privatlehrer " also belongs to 

 the latter. 



