THE AUK: 



A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF 

 ORNITHOLOGY. 



Vol. xxiii. October, 1906. No. 4. 



SOME UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF ALEXANDER 

 WILSON AND JOHN ABBOT. 



BY WITMER STONE. 



Letters of those in whose footsteps we are following and whose 

 interests are our interests are always entertaining. Especially is 

 this the case when it is supposed that all the existing letters of a 

 writer have been collected and published. This being true of 

 Alexander Wilson, my pleasure can readily be imagined when I 

 recently came across three unpublished letters bearing his sig- 

 nature, stored away in the fireproof of the library of the Acad- 

 emy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. With them was one 

 from John Abbot of Georgia, a correspondent of Wilson, well 

 known as a collector and portrayer of insects. 1 Through the 

 courtesy of Dr. Edward J. Nolan, Librarian of the Academy, I 

 am able to present these four letters to the readers of ' The Auk.' 

 The first letter was written by Wilson while he was living in 

 Philadelphia engaged in editing the 'American Cyclopaedia', and 

 addressed to Bartram at his home, across the Schuylkill, now 

 Bartram's Garden in West Philadelphia. 



1 Abbot was born in England about 1760 and at an early age was sent to Amer- 

 ica by several prominent entomologists. He remained in Georgia and was still 

 alive in 1840 (according to Swainson). Many of his paintings and notes were pub- 

 lished as Smith and Abbot's Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia, 1797. 



