2 4 o SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 



be willing to look about them and collect. Not only was 

 every contribution courteously acknowledged, both in 

 private and in public, and such apparatus as the collector 

 did not possess furnished him, but books (especially, of 

 course, Smithsonian reports and publications of the 

 Smithsonian) would be sent. All this was not a matter 

 covering a year or two, but beginning with my father's 

 first connection with the Smithsonian and lasting during 

 the entire thirty-seven years of his association with it. 

 No man ever labored more sedulously to amass a private 

 fortune, or to further his personal ends, than did my 

 father to carry out his unselfish purposes for the Museum. 



"Any one who remembers my father's magnetic per- 

 sonal qualities, which led him to kindle in others his 

 own enthusiasm, will feel how much this did in forwarding 

 the work he had at heart. He inspired those whom he 

 met with so much confidence in himself and in the im- 

 portance of the work which he urged, he had so clear an 

 idea of what he was aiming at and could make it so clear 

 to others, he was so well able to find good and efficient 

 methods and to bring to bear upon the object desired 

 all external aids, that it is hardly possible, it seems to me, 

 for any one who does not remember him, to fully realize 

 how much his own personality had to do with the accom- 

 plishment of the work which he did himself, and that 

 which was done by others under his direction. 



"During his summer vacations, up to the time when 

 the Fish Commission work absorbed his leisure almost 

 entirely, he always took with him more or less scientific 

 work, taking specimens to be studied to whatever point 

 he had selected for his summer resting place if this 

 could be called rest and, of course, keeping up his large 

 correspondence. I remember very well how in the ab- 



