ADDRESS OF DR. J. B. HOLDER. 
43 
art, and, indeed, much of it was exceedingly creditable. The 
superior art of our venerable IS^ew York friend evidently pre- 
vailed. Its influence was felt, and his examples of work were 
scanned with eager expectation as models flt for study and repro- 
duction. As the result of this observation, several artists who 
have since made good work for the several prominent institu- 
tions of the country adopted the art as a profession. 
Our history can hardly be regarded as complete without re- 
cording the names of the few taxidermists who were in these 
early times prominent, but we are not able to go further than 
the goodly vicinity of Lynn, Mass. Mr. Abel Houghton, a man 
of many amenities and at that time a notable horticulturist, had 
the good fortune to have access to some of the best work then 
done in New York. He gave much time to its study, and be- 
came a most enthusiastic worker, though wholly for his own 
pleasure. 
Mr, Samuel Jillson, then of the same town, but long since , 
removed to New Jersey, where he yet resides, was the first and 
for a long time the only person known to us as pursuing the art 
for professional purposes outside the metropolis. He had the 
benefit of Mr. Houghton’s teaching, and both, as we can testify 
from considerable personal observation, studied the few models 
which had come to them with great admiration for their author. 
The cabinets of the Essex County Natural History Society, Salem, 
Mass., and that of his own town possess the work of the former, 
and societies and museums more distant, as well as near home, 
enumerate many excellent specimens of the latter’s work. 
The museum of old, which did not always encourage the best 
art, has since passed, and the scientific museum, which calls for 
the best and a great deal of it, fortunately for taxidermy, has 
taken its place. 
The initiation of the great geological and topographical sur- 
veys of the far West led to a call for taxidermists of skill, and 
each considerable division of the respective surveys included as 
an important member of its staff a naturalist who numbered 
among his varied attainments that of the art represented by this 
Exhibition. Many of the newly-discovered species of birds and 
mammals were first noticed through the trained eyes and ears of 
