in 1860. The choice of a preceptor was more happy in a zoölogical than in a medical point of view, and the result was that teacher and student were "two boys together," discussing the woods and meadows rather more assiduously than human anatomy.
Often, in fact, text-books were laid aside for months, to give undivided attention to the fauna of the Delaware River Valley. The wide-reaching meadows, tangled swamps, and stretches of woodland on his grandfather's farm formed, collectively, the college from which it was Abbott's ambition to graduate.
The result of this untrained field-work, during 1860–'63 was a series of papers on the habits of mammals, birds, batrachians, and fishes, which were presented to a learned society for publication, and rejected, on the ground of the improbability of a boy having been able to discover so much that was not already in the writings of authors, and also because some of the observations were in many ways contradictory of them.
Young Abbott's career as an author began in 1859 with a note concerning migratory birds, which was published in the "State Gazette," of Trenton, as his maiden effort. This was followed by a short series of ornithological sketches in the same paper. In 1860 he published brief communications on fishes in the "Proceedings" of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and an account of the habits of the curious pirate perch (Aphrodederus sayanus).
The manuscripts of the rejected papers were preserved, and, in subsequent years, the later generation of naturalists verified, in their fieldwork, the results claimed to have been obtained by Abbott. Without detracting from the credit which is justly due to them as independent observers and discoverers, it is proper to say that Abbott would have forestalled much of recent work in the study of the habits of animals had his papers, when presented, been accepted.
In 1865 Abbott was graduated in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. He was married in 1867, and from that time, except for a brief interval, when engaged in manufacturing chemicals, he has devoted himself to scientific study and general literature. In 1874 he came into possession of the Abbott homestead, and was thus better enabled than before to prosecute his studies, in the pursuit of which he has spent days and nights also in the field, and has thus enjoyed the opportunity of studying the objects of his inquiries in all the situations and aspects of their life; and then it was that, more systematically than ever, he undertook those exhaustive archæological investigations which have been so fruitful of results, and have associated him so closely with the Peabody Museum of Archæology at Cambridge, Massachusetts, of which institution he has been an "assistant in the field" since 1875.
The fullness and value of Dr. Abbott's work in science can best be realized by glancing at the essays and reports which he has published.
