The first work which was devoted exclusively to an account of the lepidoptera of North America was published in England by Sir James Edward Smith, who was a botanist, and who gave to the world in two volumes some of the plates which had been drawn by John Abbot, an Englishman who lived for a number of years in Georgia. The work appeared in two folio volumes, bearing the date 1797. It is entitled "The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia." It contains one hundred and four plates, in which the insects are represented in their various stages upon their appropriate food-plants. Smith and Abbot's work contains original descriptions of only about half a dozen of the North American butterflies, and figures a number of species which had been already described by earlier authors. It is mainly devoted to the moths. This work is now rare and commands a very high price.
The next important work upon the subject was published by Dr. J.A. Boisduval of Paris, a celebrated entomologist, who was assisted by Major John E. Leconte. The work appeared in the year 1833, and is entitled "Histoire Générale et Monographie des Lepidoptères et des Chenilles de l'Amérique Septentrionale." It contains seventy-eight colored plates, each representing butterflies of North America, in many cases giving figures of the larva and the chrysalis as well as of the perfect insect. The plates were based very largely upon drawings made by John Abbot, and represent ninety-three species, while in the text there are only eighty-five species mentioned, some of which are not figured. What has been said of all the preceding works is also true of this: it is very rarely offered for sale, can only be found upon occasion, and commands a high price.
In the year 1841 Dr. Thaddeus William Harris published "A Report on the Insects of Massachusetts which are Injurious to Vegetation." This work, which was originally brought out in pursuance of an order of the legislature of Massachusetts, by the Commissioners of the Zoölogical and Botanical Survey of the State, was republished in 1842, and was followed by a third edition in 1852. The last edition, revised and improved by Charles L. Flint, Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, appeared in 1862. This work contains a number of figures and descriptions of the butterflies of New England, and, while now somewhat obsolete, still contains a great deal of valuable information, and is well worth being rescued by the student from the shelves of the second-hand book-stalls in which it is now and then to be found. For the New England student of entomology it remains to a greater or less extent a classic.