68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and revising the nomenclature of seven species, to bring it in accord 

 with the strict law of priority. This edition was by S. F. Baird alone, 

 William Baird having entered upon the practise of law, and given up 

 active participation in scientific pursuits. 



It is said that a prophet is likely to be without honor in his own 

 country; but Baird was one of those rare men who, without pushing 

 themselves forward, succeed in enlisting the sympathy and support of 

 all those about them. An amusing story is told, that once he was 

 engaged in hunting for Indian arrow-heads and other remains in a 

 field, and some men working in an adjoining field stopped to see what 

 he could be about. After watching him for some time, they concluded 

 that he was an escaped lunatic, and, procuring a rope, approached with 

 the intention of capturing him. Baird, looking up, saw them coming, 

 and immediately began to exhibit to them his finds, and explain about 

 the past history of the Indian tribes. In a moment, he was giving a 

 lecture on anthropology to a thoroughly interested and admiring audi- 

 ence, and it is reputed that some of them subsequently took up the 

 same study. Similarly, the doubts which may have been entertained 

 by his family and friends faded away, and Dickinson College, in his 

 own home town, was glad to elect him professor of natural history in 

 1845, when he was but twenty-two years of age. 



The appointment at first was little more than a token of regard, 

 for there was no pay and there were no duties assigned. Both, how- 

 ever, began simultaneously in 1846; and in the same year he married 

 Miss Mary Helen Churchill, the only daughter of Sylvester Churchill, 

 Inspector General U. S. A. It is perhaps not unfitting to cite here 

 the remark of old Mr. Solomon Brown, that " Baird was as near a 

 perfect man as I ever met with, and I do not see how such a man could 

 get a wife equal to himself; but that is what he did, for she was as 

 sweet as he was," and, added Mr. Brown, " I never saw either one 

 angry." 



Baird as a teacher was indefatigable and resourceful. He had 

 nothing resembling the luxurious laboratories of to-day, and it was 

 necessary for him in many instances to manufacture his own apparatus. 

 It was scarcely possible at that time to find text-books covering the 

 necessary ground ; but, in any event, it was no plan of Baird's to study 

 books to the exclusion of out-of-door nature. Whenever it was pos- 

 sible, chiefly on Saturday afternoons, he took those of his classes who 

 cared to join him on long walking trips in the neighborhood of Carlisle, 

 botanizing, geologizing and collecting the mammals, birds, fishes and 

 reptiles of the neighborhood. Several of the students so trained after- 

 wards went as collectors with various exploring parties, and did good 

 service in procuring material for the National Museum. In 1848 

 Baird applied for and obtained a grant from the Smithsonian Institu- 



