PUBLICATIONS OF SPENCER F. BAIRD. VII 



Society of Londou, and the Zoological Society of London, honorary 

 membership in the Linnsean Society of New South Wales, and corres- 

 ponding membership in the K. K. Zoologisvh-hotanische Gesellschaff, 

 Vienna; the Sociedad de Geographia, Lisbon; the New Zealand Institute, 

 the Koninldijlie Natuurlcundige Vereeniging in Nederlandsch Indie, Bata- 

 via; the Magyar Tudomdnyos AJcademia, Buda-Pesth; the ISoeiete Nation- 

 ale des Sciences Nattirelles, Cherbourg; the Academia Germanica Naturae 

 Curiosorum, Jena ; the Naturforschende Gesellschaft, Halle ; the Natur- 

 historische Gesellschaft, Nuremburg ; the Geographical Society of Que- 

 bec ; the Historical Society of New York ; the Deutsche Fischerei Verein, 

 Berlin. 



The nomenclature of zoology contains many memorials of his con- 

 nection with its history. A partial enumeration shows that over twenty- 

 five species and one genus of fishes bear his name. 



A post-ofQce in Shasta County, California, located near the McCloud 

 Eiver Salmon Hatching Stjition of the United States Fish Commission, 

 was named "Baird" by the Postmaster-General in 1877. 



III. 



His ancestry upon the one side was English, upon the other Scotch 

 and German. His i)aternal grandfather was Samuel Baird, of Potts- 

 towii, Pa., a surveyor by profession, whose wife was Rebecca Potts. 

 The Bairds were from Scotland, while the Potts family removed from 

 Germany to Pennsylvania at the close of the seventeenth century. His 

 great grandfather on the mother's side was the Eev. Elihu Spencer, of 

 Trenton, one of the war preachers of the Revolution, whose patriotic 

 eloquence was so infiuential that a price was set on his head by the 

 British Government; his daughter married William M. Biddle, a 

 banker, of an English family for many generations established in 

 Pennsylvania, and identified with the banking interests of Philadel- 

 phia. SatQuel Baird, the father of the subject of this sketch, estab- 

 lished himself as a lawyer at Reading, Pennsylvania, and died when 

 his son was ten years old. He was a man of fine culture, a strong- 

 thinker, a close observer, and a lover' of nature and of out-of-door 

 pursuits. His traits were inherited by his children, but especially 

 by his sons Spencer and William. The latter, who was the elder, was 

 the first to begin collecting specimens, and as early as 1836 had in 

 hand a collection of the game-birds of Cumberland County. His brother 

 soon became his companion in this pursuit, and six years later they 

 published conjointly a paper entitled " Descrii)tions of two species, sup- 

 posed to be new, of the Genus Tyrranula Swain son, found in Cumber- 

 land County, Pennsylvania." * 



There are still in the museum at Washington specimens of birds pre- 

 pared by these boys forty-five years ago by a simj)le iirocess of eviscer- 

 ation, followed by stuffing the body-cavities full of cotton and arsenical 



*See list on a subsequent page. 



