THE YOUNG PROFESSOR 171 



Alfred A. H. Ames (1848), afterward in the ministry and 

 an assistant in the work on the Iconographic Encyclo- 

 pedia. Of these John H. Clark became intimately asso- 

 ciated with the Baird family for many years. Mr. Clark 

 was a native of Maryland, and was a member of various 

 western surveys carried on under Government auspices, 

 including that of the Mexican Boundary. Miss Lucy 

 Baird observes that he was an energetic collector for the 

 Smithsonian Museum and, "during his winters in Wash- 

 ington was usually a member of our family." 



Kennedy, a Virginian, and a student of medicine, 

 intended to practise his profession in the district from 

 which he came. However, his tastes led him to connection 

 with Government surveys and finally with the Northwest 

 Boundary Survey, where he was associated with George 

 Gibbs, the ethnologist. He started for the Eastern States 

 in the spring of 1871, was taken ill on the voyage, died, 

 and was buried at sea. Bibb formed the third of a rather 

 closely allied trio of those early days, though he did not 

 enter Government service. 



Earlier in the year Baird had received a letter from 

 Professor Louis Agassiz, from which the following extracts 

 are taken: 



From Louis Agassiz to S. F. Baird. 



MY DEAR SIR, 



Months have passed away since I received your very kind letter, 

 and I should fear to have lost your sympathy did I not feel certain 

 you will pardon me for not having answered it earlier when I mention 

 the circumstances which prevented me from doing it as I ought to 

 have done. But conceive of the position of a naturalist entirely 

 devoted to his studies without any other object before him, arriving 

 in a world quite new to him, as so full of interesting objects as this 

 is, and you will easily imagine how I have been carried away by the 



