Henry Bryant (naturalist)

[1] In October 1847, Bryant returned to Boston to work with Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow as a surgeon, but after a few months his health broke down again.

After being forced to abandon medicine because of ill health, Bryant turned to natural history, especially ornithology, which was a childhood passion.

Bryant visited nearby Cohasset, Massachusetts for one of his first collecting trips, but he seriously injured his stomach from a fall while landing his boat.

After the Civil War ended, Bryant made several trips to France, including to purchase the Frédéric de Lafresnaye collection of birds in 1865, which he presented to the Boston Society of Natural History.

The unpacking and remounting of the specimen was conducted by younger naturalists, including Charles Johnson Maynard, and took about a year to complete.

[2] In addition to his visits to France, Bryant collected birds in Florida, the Bahamas, Ontario and Labrador, North Carolina, Cuba, Jamaica and Puerto Rico.