22 HELEN ABBOTT MICHAEL 



" A short vacation in July I passed with my aunt, Mrs. Ellen 

 Abbott, at the Delaware Water Gap. There she introduced 

 me to one of the resident clergymen, a man who was immensely 

 interested in scientific work, and who had brought up his chil- 

 dren to be familiar with natural history and botany, and al- 

 though his means were extremely limited, he had spared no 

 opportunities that he was able to command to train them in 

 scientific methods. My aunt knew my tastes and of Professor 

 Cope's encouraging me to collect specimens. He had pur- 

 chased her home in Haddonfield and, to her despair, had al- 

 lowed her beautifully cultivated garden to become a perfect 

 wilderness and headquarters for all the small game and rodents 

 of the country around. I desired very much to obtain a col- 

 lection of the geological specimens of the country around and 

 of the numerous fossils in which the neighborhood abounded. 

 My Aunt Ellen entrusted me to the escort of her clergyman 

 friend, and with the assistance of my colored maid, Fannie, 

 a 'stone-breaker,' as she called herself, we started out bright 

 and early of mornings with basket and hammer in hand. These 

 excursions were amply rewarded by the interesting finds that 

 we made. 



"Fannie and I had been warned by our friend to look out for 

 copperhead snakes, as the ridges where the fossils abounded 

 were the favorite haunts of these snakes. The color of the 

 stones and ground were so nearly like the color of the snake 

 that some care was necessary not to pick one up. It was the 

 season when snakes were plentiful. Rattlesnakes were at times 

 encountered in the region, and often when we would be seated 

 resting, an odor from the woods would be wafted to us, and 

 then Fannie would say, 'Come on, Miss Helen, there's rattle- 

 snakes about here. Don't you smell the watermelon odor?' 

 As she had come from the South and had lived long in a lo- 

 cality where rattlesnakes were plentiful, I did not dispute her 

 knowledge, and I invariably 'moved on.' 



"The autumn of '86 I attended the American Association 

 meeting held in Buffalo, and I read before the chemical section 

 two papers, one on the classification of plants on a chemical 

 basis, and the other on an analysis of the Honduras plant Chi- 



