80 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



tory and chemistry in his own college, wlieic he remained until 1850, 

 having married, meantime, Miss Mary H. Churchill, the daughter of 

 General Sylvester Churchill, U. S. Army, for many years Inspector- 

 General. 



"The inheritance of a love of nature and a taste for scientific classi- 

 fication, together with the companionship of a brother similarly gifted, 

 tended to the development of the young naturalist. In 1841, at the age 

 of eighteen, we find him making an ornithological excursion through 

 the mountains of Pennsylvania, walking 400 miles in twenty-one days, 

 the last day GO miles between daylight and rest. The following year 

 he walked more than 2,200 miles. His fine physique and consequent 

 capacit^^ for work are doubtless due in part to his outdoor life during 

 these years. 



"The coming of Agassiz to the United States in 1846, was an inspira- 

 tion to him, and one of the first great works projected by the Swiss sa- 

 vant was a joint memoir upon the fishes of North America, which was 

 eiTthusiastically begun by the young Dickinson professor, but never 

 brought to the point of publication. 



"Agassiz did not become established in Cambridge until 1848, and it 

 is to'Baird rather than to him that should belong the credit of having 

 introduced into American schools the system of laboratory practice and 

 field explorations in connection with natural history instruction. Mou- 

 cure D. Conway, who was one of his pupils, has often told me how fas- 

 cinating were Professor Baird's explanations of natural phenomena, and 

 how the contagion of his enthusiasm spread among his pupils, who fre- 

 quently followed him through the fields and woods 20 or 30 miles a day. 



" His mentor at this period was the Hon. George P. Marsh, of Vermont, 

 already prominent in public affairs, and his warm friend and admirer.* 

 To him Professor Baird felt that he owed his real start in life, for Mr. 

 Marsh, feeling that h\s protege was disposed to bury himself too deeply 

 in the technicalities of a specialty, proposed that he should undertake 

 the translation and editorship of an edition of the ' Iconographic Ency- 

 clopicdia,' a version of Heck's BUder- Atlas ^ imblished in connection with 

 the famous Conversations- Lexilcon of Brockhaus. This task, though ex- 

 ceedingly laborious and confining to a young man of twenty-six, en- 

 tirely untrained in literary methods, was efiQciently and rapidly per- 

 formed, and resulted in a great extension of his tastes and sympathies, 

 while the training which he acquired was an excellent x>i"eparation for 

 the tremendous literary tasks which he undertook without hesitation 

 in later years. It was also to the interest of Mr. Marsh, who was one 

 of the earliest Kegents of the Smithsonian Institution, that he owed his 

 nomination to the position of Assistant Secretary of that Institution, 

 then recently organized, which he accepted July 5, 1850, and October 

 3, at the age of twenty-seven years, entered upon his life-work in con- 



* In Mrs, Caroliue Marsh's lately published biography of her husband many inter- 

 esting letters from Mr. Marsh to Professor Baird are quoted. 



