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forty will be coloured. The small inconvenience of not always having all the plates 

 referred to in the text issued at the same time with it, cannot of course possibly be 

 obviated in a systematic work, where everything is treated fully in its proper place under 

 each species, and in which the number of subjects needing illustration in each part is 

 greater than can be shown on the quota of plates for that part. The whole will be 

 issued in a year, in twelve parts, each to contain eight plates and about 150 pages of text. 



James Fletcher. 



JOHN ABBOT, THE AURELIAN. 



BY SAMUEL H. SCUDDER. 



It has been a fortunate thing for the study of butterflies in this country that the 

 earlier students were those who devoted themselves very largely to the natural history of 

 these insects rather than to their systematic or descriptive study. It was indeed a natural 

 and healthy result of the poverty of external resources in earlier times, and I have 

 thought that it would not be devoid of interest to present a few facts concerning the life 

 and industry of one of these earlier naturalists, who worked to such good purpose and 

 accomplished so much under circumstances that would now seem very forbidding. 



A unique figure, perhaps the most striking in the early development of natural 

 history in America, is that of a man of whom we know almost absolutely nothing, excepting 

 what he accomplished. With one exception, all our knowledge of his personality comes 

 through tradition. No life of him has ever been written, excepting a brief notice, by 

 Swainson,in the Bibliography of Zoology, to which Mr. G. Brown Goode has kindly called my 

 attention. It is not known when or where he was born or when he died, scarcely where 

 he lived or to what nationality he belonged. Even the town where he worked no longer 

 exists. His name alone remains ; and though we have access to not a little of his writing 

 in his own round hand, his signature cannot be discovered.* 



John Abbot was presumably an Englishman, as the name is English, and he is said 

 by Sir. J. E. Smith to have begun his career by the study of the transformations of British 

 insects. When not far from thirty years old, and probably about 1790, be was engaged 

 by three or four of the leading entomologists of England to go out to North America for 

 the purpose of collecting insects for their cabinets. After visiting several places in 

 different parts of the Union he determined to settle in the " Province of Georgia," as 

 Swainson calls it. Here he lived for nearly twenty years, in Scriven County, as I am 

 informed by several persons through the kindness of Dr. Oemler. of Wilmington Island 

 in that State, returning to England probably not far from 1810, where he was living 

 about 1840, at the age " probably above eighty." It is rumored in Georgia that he owned 

 land there, and all that can be learned of him comes from persons beyond middle life, in 

 that State, who remember heariug their parents speak of him. Col. Charles C. Jones, 

 the Georgia historian, informs me through Dr. Oemler, that " while he remained in 

 Georgia in the prosecution of his scientific labours his headquarters were at Jackson- 

 borough, then the county seat of Scriven County. Here his work on the lepidoptera of 

 Georgia was largely prepared. All traces of this old town have now passed away." It 

 is supposed that he also employed himself as a school master in this place, but this is 

 purely traditional, and his occasional bungling, not to say ungrammatical sentences, rather 

 indicate a lack of schooling on his own part. What we certainly know regarding him is 

 that he entered into relations with John Francillon, a silversmith, in the Strand, London, 

 who had a famous collection of insects and an extensive entomological correspondence. 

 Francillon undertook to supply subscribers with drawings of insects and plants by Abbot, 

 as well as with specimens, the latter of which, says Swainson, "were certainly the finest 

 that have ever been transmitted as articles of commerce to this country ; they were 



* Mr. W. F. Kirby has kindly made many researches for me at the British Museum, the Linnaean 

 Society, etc. 



