Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/573

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SKETCH OF CHARLES C. ABBOTT.
553

In February, 1886, Harper & Brothers, of New York, published "Upland and Meadow," a volume on the same general style as the preceding, but in no instance repeating the subject-matter of the earlier volume. The two books give a nearly complete account of the fauna of a New Jersey farm; an account which will be really completed by the publication of a third volume, treating largely of botanical features.

An idea of the quality of Dr. Abbott's books—the true flavor can be enjoyed in its perfection only in reading the books themselves—is given in the London "Academy's" (May 1, 1886) notice of "Upland and Meadow," which concludes:

"Books like this make us more interested in America than do the countless volumes of travelers. There is that charm of freshness, that power of interesting us, as much as the writer was himself interested, that frank inquisitiveness—though it may smack a little of the modern interviewer, carried to the world of upland, meadow, river, and trees, taking stealthy views at the midnight side of Nature with a dark-lantern—which make the book attractive from beginning to end, which make us read every page, and make it, by our keeping it as a book of reference, memorable. It abounds not only in facts, but in fancy; and so a boy from school or a world-wise father will find that it adds to his joys in the open air, or reveals the wonderful life about his feet."

Dr. Abbott is a corresponding member of the Boston Society of Natural History; of the New York Academy of Sciences; of the Linnæan Society of New York; of the Nuttall Ornithological Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts; of the Anthropological Society of Washington, D.C.; of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia; and of the Davenport Academy of Sciences, Davenport, Iowa; and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of the North, Copenhagen.