122 HARPER 



over the roads between Savannah and Augusta, and prob- 

 ably crossed the eastern end of the Grit in what is now Screven 

 County. Both Bartram and Michaux noted there an unfamiliar 

 shrub which must have been Cliftonia, one of the most character- 

 istic plants of the region. 



In the last decade of the 18th century John Abbot, an English 

 artist and entomologist, was making the drawings for his 

 Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia 

 (edited by Sir J. E. Smith and published in London in 1797), 

 and he seems to have worked principally if not entirely in the 

 counties of Screven (laid off in 1793) and Bulloch (laid off in 1796), 

 though not altogether in the Altamaha Grit region. 1 Besides 

 a few new species figured by Abbot and described by Smith, he 

 was also the discoverer of Sabbatia gentianoides Ell., which came 

 from Bulloch County. 



Early in the 19th century CEmler, Baldwin, Elliott, and Bey- 

 rich must have crossed the eastern end of the Altamaha Grit 

 country at about the same place where Bartram and Michaux 

 did, but they do not seem to have published any notes on it. 



About 1830 Nuttall was in Tattnall County (established in 

 1 801), and discovered there Arenaria brevifolia and a Sarracenia 

 which he took to be new. 2 And in his Sylva of North America 3 he 

 mentions having found Cliftonia at the same place where Bartram 

 did. This seems to be all that is on record about his travels in 

 the Altamaha Grit region. 



About the same time Croom, on his semi-annual journeys from 

 North Carolina to Florida, must have passed through or close to 

 the inland edge of the region (somewhere between Louisville and 

 Hawkinsville), for he mentions finding at least one plant {Pent- 

 stemon dissectus) which is not known elsewhere. (James Jackson, 



1 The drawings mostly represent plants which can now be found in 

 those counties, and there is other evidence about the time and place of 

 some of Abbot's subsequent work, in Darlington's Reliquice Baldwiniance. 

 Also in White's Statistics of Georgia (1849), under the head of "Instances 

 of Longevity" in Screven County, is a statement that " Mr. Abbot lived 

 to an advanced age." 



2 See Torreya 4: 140. 1904. 



3 2: 93. 1846. 



