TIIKEK EARLY AMERICAN NATURALISTS. 651 



EXCURSUS XX. — THE THREE PIONEER STUDENTS OF 

 BUTTERFLIES IN THIS COUNTRY. 



Hast tboii l;ecn in the woods with the hoiiey-I)ee? 

 Hast tliou l)eeii with the lanil) in the pastures free? 

 With the hare tliro' the copse.s ami dinj^'les wild? 

 With the Initterdy over the hoatli, fair child? 



Hemans.— 67«"Ws Eehirnfroni the Woodlands. 



Fortunately for the study of butterflies in this country the earlier 

 students were those who devoted themselves very largelv 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 re- 

 sources 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 three 

 of these earlier naturalists, who worked to such good purpose and accom- 

 plished so uuich, under circumstances that would now seem very for- 

 biddins;. 



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 belono-ed. 

 Even the town where he worked no longer exists. His name alone re- 

 mains, and though we have access to not a little of his writing in his own 

 round hand, his signature connot be discovered. 



John Abbot was presumably an Englishman, as the name is Eno-lish, 

 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 apparently not far from 1810, where he was livino- 

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

 Georgia that he owned land there, and all that can be learned of him 

 comes from persons beyond middle life in that State, who remember hear- 

 ing their parents speak of him. Col. Charles C. Jones, the Georgia 

 historian, informs me through Dr. Oemler that "while he remained in 



