THREE EARLY AMERICAN NATURALISTS. 653 



miniature portrait let into the title page, which, tradition says, was 

 painted by Abbot himself, and indeed it bears every mark of this, 

 though there is no memorandum to this effect within the volume. This 

 portrait is published herewith from a faithful copy taken for me by the 

 late ^Ir. George Willis. With its peculiar physiognomy and strait dress 

 it adds considerably to our interest in the original ; there seems to be not 

 a little humor in the quaint features and figure, and the spare form hardly 

 gives the figure of robust health which the face would indicate. Abbot 

 probably returned to England about 1810 at an age of perhaps fifty, and 

 our portrait was doubtless painted at about this time, certainly before he 

 left America, since it rej)resents him in the thinnest of southern costume. 

 There wei'e old persons living in Georgia up to 1885, but since deceased, 

 who kncAV him, but apparently none now remain. 



Abbot's work Avas by no means on Lepidoptera alone, as any of the 

 series of his drawings will show. Dr. Hagen, in speaking of the volume 

 in the British Museum containing the Neuroptera, says that all the details 

 are given Avith the greatest care, and that in almost all cases the species 

 can be identified. The same is the case with most of the draAvings of 

 Lepidoptera, though there is a mark of carelessness in some of the figures 

 of early stages Avhich is not found in others ; this is no doubt due to the 

 fact that so many applied for these draAvings, "both in Europe and 

 America, that he found it expedient to employ one or tAvo assistants, Avhose 

 copies be retouched, and thus finished they generally pass as his OAvn. 

 To an experienced eye, hoAvever, the originals of the master are readily 

 distinguished." Many of these draAvings, especially those of the British 

 Museum, Ave haAC copied upon our plates, as much for their special in- 

 terest in connection Avith A bbot's Avork as for their representation of forms 

 Avhich are here described. 



It Avould hardly appear that he paid more attention to Lepidoptera than 

 to other insects. Yet in the Oemler collection alone there are one hun- 

 dred and thirty-three plates of Lepidoptera, nearly every one of which 

 figures a species distinct from the others, and ninety-four of Avhich are 

 accompanied by the early stages. Twenty-tAvo of these are insects figm'ed 

 in Abbot and Smith's Avork, but the figures of the early stages are in no 

 case identical ; they represent the same insect but in different attitudes. 

 Of these one hundred and thirty-three plates, thirty-four are concerned 

 with the buttei-flies. The drawings of butterflies in the British Museum 

 are contained in the sixth and sixteenth volumes, the former comprising 

 the perfect insects only, the latter the early stages as Avell, and in this lat- 

 ter series thirty-six species are figured, Avhile the tAvo Boston collections 

 contain figures of the early stages of all but two of the species represented 

 in the British Museum volume. SAvainson states that a series of one hun- 

 dred and three subjects of Lepidoptera, including none published before, 



