BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD. 



I. Outline of his public career. 

 II. Honors and dignities. 



III. Ancestry and development of character. 



IV. Early friendships and their influence. 

 V. Analysis of his work and its results. 



VI. Contributions to science and scientific literature. 

 VII. Educational and administrative works. 

 VIII. Work as Commissioner of Fisheries. 

 IX. Epilogue. 



I. 



Spencer Fullerton Baird was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Febru- 

 ary 3, 1823. In 1834 he was sent to a Quaker boarding-school kept by 

 Dr. McGraw, at Port Deposit, Maryland, and the year following- to the 

 Eeading Grammar School. In 1836 he entered Dickinson College, and 

 was graduated at the age of seventeen. After leaving college, his time 

 for several years was devoted to studies in general natural history, to 

 long pedestrian excursions for the purpose of observing animals and 

 plants and collecting specimens, and to the organization of a private 

 cabinet of natural history, which a few years later became the nucleus 

 of the museum of the Smithsonian Institution. During this period he 

 published a number of original papers on natural history. He also read 

 medicine with Dr. Middleton Goldsmith, attending a winter course of 

 lectures at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, in New York, in 

 1842. His medical course was never formally completed, although in 

 1848 he received the degree of M. D., honoris causa, from the Philadelphia 

 Medical College. In 1845 he was chosen professor of natural history 

 in Dickinson College, and in 184- his duties and emoluments were 

 increased by election to the chair of natural history and chemistry in 

 the same institution. In 1848 he declined a call to the professorship 

 of natural science in the University of Vermont. In 1849 he undertook 

 his first extensive literary work, translating and editing the text for 

 the " Iconographic Encyclopedia," an English version of Heck's Bilder 

 Atlas, published in connection with Brockhaus's Conversations LexiJcon. 



