49 



always sent home expanded, even the most minute ; and he was so watchful and inde- 

 fatigable in his researches that he contrived to breed nearly the whole of the Lepidoptera. 

 His general price, for a box-full, was sixpence each specimen, which was certainly not 

 too much considering the beauty and high perfection of all the individuals. Abbot, how- 

 ever, was not a mere collector. Every moment of time he could possibly devote from his 

 field researches was employed in making finished drawings of the larva, pupa and perfect 

 insect of every lepidopterous species, as well as of the plant upon which it fed. Those 

 drawings are so beautifully chaste and wonderfully correct that they were coveted by every- 

 one." It would appear from a note in Kirby and Spence's Introduction to Entomology 

 (5th ed., iii., 148), that " the ingenious Mr. Abbot " also knew the art of inflating cater- 

 pillar skins and dealt in them through Francillon. (See many other references in the 

 same volume.) There still exist in various places, principally in the British Museum, 

 but also at Oxford, Paris and Zurich, and in this country, at Boston, large series of his 

 drawings of insects and plants. Those in the British Museum are arranged in sixteen 

 stout quarto volumes, bound in red morocco ; each volume has a printed title page and is 

 dated 1792 to 1809, the dates, no doubt, between which they were purchased for the 

 Museum through Francillon from Abbot, and which probably indicate the period of his 

 activity in America. In Boston two similar volumes exist, one of which was presented 

 by Dr. Gray of the British Museum to Dr. Gray, the botanist, of Cambridge, and by him 

 to the Natural History Society where it may now be seen. The other volume is a collec- 

 tion, perhaps the only considerable one which has never passed out of this country, which 

 was purchased by the Society from Dr. Oemler of Georgia, who inherited it from his 

 father.* 



In the title page of the last volume of the British Museum series there is a miniature 

 portrait let into the title page which tradition says was painted by Abbot himself, and 

 indeed it bears every mark of this, though there is no memorandum to this effect within 

 the volume; with its peculiar physiogomy it adds considerably to our interest in the original; 

 there seems to be not a little humour in the quaint features and figure, and the spare form 

 hardly gives the figure of robust health which the face would indicate. Abbot probably 

 returned, to England about 1810, at an age of about fifty, and our portrait was doubtless 

 painted at about this time, certainly before he left America, since it represents him in the 

 thinnest of southern costumes. There were old persons living in Georgia up to 1885, but 

 since deceased, who knew him, but apparently none now remain. 



Abbot's work was by no means on Lepidoptera alone, as any of the series of his 

 drawings will show. Dr. Hagen, in speaking of the volume in the British Museum con- 

 taining the Neuroptera, says that all the details are given with the greatest care and that 

 in almost all cases the species can be identified. The same is the case with most of the 

 drawings of Lepidoptera, though there is a mark of carelessness in some of the figures of 

 early stages which is not found in others ; this is no doubt due to the fact that so many 

 applied for these drawings " both in Europe and America that he found it expedient to 

 employ one or two assistants whose copies he retouched, and, thus finished, they generally 

 pass as his own. To an experienced eye, however, the originals of the master are 

 readily distinguished." 



It would hardly appear that he paid more attention to Lepidoptera than to other 

 insects. Yet in the Oemler collection alone there are one hundred and thirty-three plates 

 of Lepidoptera, nearly every one of which figures a species distinct from the others, and 

 ninety-four of which are accompanied by the early stages. Twenty-two of these are 

 insects figured in Abbot and Smith's work, but the figures of the early stages are in no case 

 identical ; they represent the same insect, but in different attitudes. Of these one hundred 

 and thirty-three plates, thirty-four are concerned with the butterflies. The drawings of 

 butterflies in the British Museum are contained in the sixth and sixteenth volumes; the 

 former comprising the perfect insects only, the latter the early stages as well, and in this 

 latter series thirty-six species are figured ; while the two Boston collections contain 

 figures of the early stages of all but two of the species represented in the British Museum 

 volume. Swainson states that a series of one hundred and three subjects of Lepidoptera, 



* Mr. Oemler and Mr. " LeCompte " are both mentioned in Abbot's notes as sending him specimens. 



4 (en.) 



