VII 



1850 TO 1865 



ATER Professor Baird's installation as Assistant Sec- 

 retary his Journals are even more brief in their 

 references to each day's work than before. This 

 was natural, as he was intensely busy, with practically no 

 assistance at first, and for several months hampered by 

 illness of his wife and daughter. 



The correspondence relating to his early activities in 

 promoting the scientific side of Government exploration, 

 so far as it was official was destroyed in the Smithsonian 

 fire of 1865. This included nearly all Baird's own letters. 

 The material available to the biographer is thus confined 

 almost entirely to such letters to Professor Baird as he 

 regarded as personal, and which at the time of the fire 

 were in his private files; the curt annotations in his Journal; 

 and the evidence of his publications. 



The scope of this biography does not include a detailed 

 history of the'various expeditions sent out by the Govern- 

 ment between 1850 and 1861. This would extend far 

 beyond the limits assigned for the present volume, and 

 require a study of documents and official records for which 

 the present biographer has neither the time nor the 

 strength. ' It is a work well worthy the attention of an 

 historian. Probably no other Government, in the same 

 number of years, has added so much to geographical and 

 scientific knowledge. That the scientific were added to 

 the immediately practical details and simultaneously pub- 

 lished, is almost entirely due to the influence exerted by 

 248 



