VoI m ] | XY ] Rhoads, Abbot's Birds of Georgia. 277 



Faxon has referred to the work of Abbot from both artistic and 

 scientific aspects and I fully agree with his conclusions. It may 

 seem invidious to compare his bird sketches with those of Wilson, 

 whose perfected illustrations have so long been over-praised by 

 many, who, appreciating his literary and field work and his desper- 

 ate struggles in the publication of his 'Ornithology,' have been 

 unduly biased in his favor as an artist. Anyone examining the 

 uncolored pencil and pen drawings which formed the great bulk of 

 the originals which Wilson handed to his engraver, Alexander 

 Lawson, will be convinced that Abbot's colored plates are in a 

 different class. Several of Wilson's original sketches, or rough 

 drafts, on scraps of paper, are mounted in a portfolio presented to 

 the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia many years ago 

 by the descendants of Lawson. In this, Lawson has mounted the 

 Wilson drafts opposite a highly finished proof impression of the 

 engraved plate in two states, the one, plain, on India paper, the 

 other, carefully colored, on heavy plate paper. An examination of 

 these will convince the most skeptical how much of the credit given 

 the authors of illustrated works is rightly due to their engravers. 

 Even Audubon was no exception to this. Abbot's great ability 

 with the brush, as an off-hand colorist and at the same time a 

 faithful recorder of seasonal and racial plumages in birds, is on a 

 par with his work on moths and butterflies and their larvse. Con- 

 sidering the difficulty of depicting, in natural pose and proportion, 

 the mounted bird specimens which evidently were his models, as 

 compared with copying from flat mounts of the Lepidoptera, it is 

 surprising how well his portfolios were executed in one of the 

 "Lost Towns of Georgia" at a period when the crude illustrations 

 of ornithological literature had advanced little beyond those of the 

 age of Linnseus. The remarkable similarity of make-up and style 

 between Abbot's bird plates and those of George Edwards in his 

 fine old color plate quartos of the 'Natural History of Birds/ 

 begun in 1743, convinces me that the inspiration came from that 

 publication more than any other, especially in view of the large 

 number of American species which were there figured for the first 

 time. We see in both the stereotyped accessories of the taxider- 

 mist, — a miniature tree, often leafless, decked with bits of moss and 

 lichens, a conventional stand, or groundwork of grass patches, 



