With Descriptions Of Their Color, Size, And Habits, And The Food And Metamorphosis Of Their Larvae. Alexander Milton Ross, Canadian physician, abolitionist, author, naturalist, and reformer, was born on December 23, 1832, in Belleville, Upper Canada (Ontario). A considerable part of his life was spent in the United States, and he died in Detroit, Michigan, on October 27, 1897, at the age of 65 years. Ross basically was an idealist, who with intense energy and dedication promoted causes in which he aligned himself. He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City in 1855. Ross spent the next ten years promoting the abolition movement in the northern and southern states of the United States and in Canada, a devotion that he pursued until the Civil War. Ross traveled widely and reportedly befriended William Cullen Bryant, Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadswoth Longfellow, and John Greenleaf Whittier. He served, apparently unofficially, as President Lincoln’s informant on abolition activities in Canada during 1864. On his return to Canada in 1865, Ross became an avid collector of natural history specimens.The Butterflies and Moths of Canada… (1873) followed The Birds of Canada… (1871), but neither of his planned books on the ferns nor wild flowers were released despite being advertised as in press. Ross was elected a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London and of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.–Henry M. Reeves.