Vni INTRODUCTION 



James Smithson's legacy for the establisliment of an institution "for the 

 increase and diffusion of knowledge among men" resulted in Congress' pass- 

 ing a bill in 1846 for the incorporation of the Smithsonian Institution. 

 With the appointment of Dr. Spencer FuUerton Baird as Assistant Secre- 

 tary in 1850, announcement was made of the gathering of a collection of 

 natural history objects. Dr. Baird's personal collection, deposited in the 

 Smithsonian Institution in that year, was the forerunner of numerous other 

 collections that began to arrive soon afterward. The Smithsonian encour- 

 aged such donations by distributing instructions on how to collect and pre- 

 serve natural history materials and by sponsoring or assisting various 

 exploring expeditions. Reptiles and amphibians were represented in these 

 early collections. As the materials were received and cataloged, they were 

 assigned to specialists for identification and description, and duplicate 

 material received was given to or served as the basis of exchange with other 

 institutions at home and abroad. 



Much of this early material collected and deposited in the Smithsonian 

 Institution issued from the 19th-century exploring expeditions abroad, and 

 from the land surveys of the West. Perhaps earliest of these was the U.S. 

 Exploring Expedition, commanded by Charles Wilkes, which sailed on its 

 round-the-world voyage in 1838, touching at African, South American, 

 Antarctic, Asian, and western North American coasts. Natural history ob- 

 jects were collected near the coast at every stop. In 1842 the expedition 

 returned with most of its collections intact. The materials, at first deposited 

 in the U.S. Patent Office, were in 1857, along with specimens collected by 

 other expeditions, turned over to the Smithsonian Institution. Many of the 

 animals secured on this journey represented forms as yet unknown to science 

 and hence were in need of a scientific name and a description. Dr. Baird 

 and his friend and colleague, Dr. Charles Girard, wrote several papers on 

 the herpetological results of this expedition. Dr. Girard's later book and 

 atlas became classics. 



The La Plata Expedition, under the command of Thomas Jefferson Page, 

 from 1853 through 1856 explored and mapped the tributaries of the La 

 Plata River and the adjacent countries of Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, and 

 Bolivia. Zoological collections were made, and subsequent study yielded 

 additional new forms of animal life. 



In 1853 the U.S. Army Engineers, directed to find a "practicable and 

 economical" route for the first railroad to be laid from the Mississippi to the 

 Pacific, surveyed five possible routes between the 32d and 49th parallels. 

 Collections of animals, plants, and minerals were made at every opportunity, 

 and these excellent representations of the natural history of a vast part of the 

 West eventually came to be deposited in the Smithsonian Institution. 



In 1854 began the work of the commission headed by Major William H. 

 Emory to survey lands to establish a permanent U.S.-Mexican boundary. 

 The reptiles and amphibians of the boundary were listed by Dr. Baird in 1859, 

 following earlier preliminary descriptions of new species by him and others. 



